Contemporary String Bands and the Black Roots Music Revival

EMPOWERMENT THROUGH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: CONTEMPORARY STRING BANDS AND THE BLACK ROOTS MUSIC REVIVAL

A thesis submitted to the College of the Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Maya O. Brown

August 2018

Thesis written by

Maya O. Brown

B.A., Music, University of Mount Union, 2015

M.A., Ethnomusicology, Kent State University, 2018

Approved by

______Jennifer Johnstone, Ph.D., Advisor

______Jane K. Dressler, D.M.A., Interim Director, School of Music

______John Crawford-Spinelli, Ed.D., Dean, College of the Arts

BROWN, MAYA, M.A., AUGUST 2018

EMPOWERMENT THROUGH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: CONTEMPORARY STRING BANDS AND THE BLACK ROOTS MUSIC REVIVAL (115 PP.)

Director of Thesis: Jennifer Johnstone

This thesis examines the ways in which contemporary black string band musicians are redefining and reclaiming black musical identity. Specifically, I draw on performance analysis and interviews with former and current members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops to explore the ways in which black string band musicians navigate predominantly white performances spaces, and I suggest that their participation in such contexts speaks to a larger issue of a black roots music revival that was inspired by the Black Banjo Gatherings of 2005 and 2010. To situate this phenomenon as an important occurrence in American music scholarship, and using a survey conducted with 148 undergraduate students, I further problematize the established canon of

American music historiography by highlighting issues of tokenism, the intentional neglect of black entertainers, particularly black minstrel performers and musicians of the nineteenth century, and I reveal the effects of such bias on the general understanding of American music history. I conclude by showing that the black roots music revival is in essence a celebration of the enduring spirit of black music despite the perverse effect of white supremacy on African

American life; it is a movement that acknowledges black culture’s indefatigability for survival and liberation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

LIST OF FIGURES ...... v

LIST OF TABLES ...... vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Statement of Research Problem ...... 3 Methodology ...... 3 Theoretical Paradigm ...... 5 Black String Bands in Black Music Historiography ...... 12 Goals and Significance ...... 17

II. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE...... 20 The Banjo ...... 21 The Fiddle ...... 28 Slave Entertainment ...... 30 Blackface in Perspective ...... 34 African American Blackface Minstrelsy ...... 40 The Decline of the Black String Band ...... 44

III. BLACK ROOTS MUSIC REVIVAL ...... 50 The Black Banjo Gathering of 2005 ...... 52 The Black Banjo Gathering of 2010 ...... 62 Critical Reflections ...... 65 Ethnographic Analysis ...... 65 Theoretical Analysis ...... 70

IV. SURVEY AND ANALYSIS ...... 78 Method ...... 81 Results ...... 82 Demographic Information ...... 82 American Music History ...... 84 Audio Clip Recognition ...... 95 Blackface Minstrelsy ...... 98 Analysis...... 105

V. CONCLUSION AND OTHER REMARKS...... 107

APPENDIX ...... 112

REFERENCES ...... 114

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta, a Jola musician from Gambia, playing a folk akonting...... 25

2. Sir Hans Sloane’s drawings of two gourd lutes and a harp in his 1707 book, “A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica.” ...... 27

3. Nigerian musician, Masa dan Gado Saminaka, playing the Housa goge ...... 29

4. Four “For Sale” slave advertisements, followed by three “Run Away” slave advertisements, in newspapers from the colonial period ...... 30

5. Henry Latrobe’s drawing of the gourd lute he saw being played in Congo Square ...... 31

6. A plantation frolic on Christmas Eve ...... 34

7. Four Dan Emmett on the sheet music cover of, “Dandy Jim from Caroline,” published around 1844 ...... 39

8. Photo of blackface minstrel banjoist Horace Weston ...... 43

9. Depiction of a black jazz banjoist on the cover of an Okeh Race Records Catalogue ...... 48

10. Jam Session at The 2005 Black Banjo Gathering ...... 57

11. Members of Sankofa Strings ...... 58

12. Members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and their mentor, Joe Thompson ...... 60

13. Current member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hubby Jenkins ...... 63

14. Tin-Type Photograph of participants at the 2010 Black Banjo Gathering Reunion mentioned by Dom Flemons ...... 64

15. Dom Flemons and Brian Farrow performing at the 2017 Canal Jam ...... 66

Figure Page

16. Desk with the rather small framed photos of the black musicians featured in the repertoire performed by Rhiannon Giddens and others at Cincinnati Music Hall ...... 70

17. #FREEMRBARRON t-shirt created by angry student ...... 79

18. Graph illustrating the racial demographics of participants ...... 81

19. Graph illustrating the participant musical experience ...... 82

20. Word clouds of music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music European Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.” ...... 85

21. Word clouds of non-music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music European Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.” ...... 85

22. Word clouds of music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music African Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”...... 87

23. Word clouds of non-music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music African Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”...... 87

24. Music Major responses when asked where the banjo is originally from ...... 89

25. Word cloud to the question “What racial demographic do you associate with country music genres (e.g. bluegrass, old-time music, folk)? Why?” ...... 90

26. Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question “Name an African American musician who contributed to early country music history.” ...... 92

27. Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question “Name an African American musician who plays the fiddle or banjo today.” ...... 92

28. Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question “Do you know what a race record is? If yes, how did race records affect American music?” ...... 94

29. Participant responses when asked if they knew African Americans performed blackface minstrelsy...... 102

30. Responses to “Do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society? If yes, how? ...... 103

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Participant responses when asked where the banjo is originally from ...... 88

2. School subjects that participants learned about blackface minstrelsy ...... 99

3. Age of participants when they learned about blackface minstrelsy ...... 100

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wholeheartedly want to thank my advisor Dr. Jennifer Johnstone, whose immense knowledge, motivation, and kindness were invaluable to my graduate work and my thesis. Thank you to the members of my thesis committee, Dr. Andrew Shahriari and Dr. Janine Tiffe, for your guidance and feedback. I offer special thanks to Dr. Richard Devore for your support of this project and my research. I am deeply indebted to all who agreed to participate in this study including the undergraduate students who partook in the survey. The musicians and scholars I interviewed were monumental to this work. I extend sincere gratitude to Dom Flemons, Hubby

Jenkins, and Brian Farrow for your time and graciousness. Thank you to Dr. Cecelia Conway and Dr. Kip Lornell for sharing your wisdom. I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents, Pamela and Terry Brown. Words cannot express my appreciation for the sacrifices you have made for me and the unconditional encouragement you bestow. To my brothers Eric and Anthony Brown,

I thank you for your support. I am also grateful to my other family members and friends who have expressed love along the way. Finally, I would like to express appreciation to Samuel

Boateng. We traveled this journey together.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

My relationship with string band music began when I was quite young. Although I did not grow up listening to the music out of enjoyment, I often encountered the sounds of string band performance in a particular context. I grew up in Tiffin, a small town in Northwest Ohio.

The diversity of the community is not high, nor has it grown much in the past twenty-five years that I have witnessed. Every fall, my town holds The Heritage Festival (i.e. a mere hodgepodge of historical references amalgamated into one celebration). There you will find Abraham and

Mary Todd Lincoln strolling passed a frontiersman carving a canoe and a local Native American man telling stories to children by the fire. Vendors acting in character line the midway and with every breeze you may catch the aroma of kettle corn or barbequed buffalo burgers. Before you enter the gates to the festival, or even catch sight of the canvas tents in the distance, you hear the lively acoustic sounds of banjo and fiddle music inviting you to take part in the festivities.

However, as you take your first steps onto the festival grounds you also notice confederate flags hanging off the tents of what seem to be confederate army-themed campsites. You see women in

Gone With the Wind styled dresses arm-in-arm with confederate soldier reenactors. Walking into the tent of a vendor you see arranged on the tables confederate memorabilia such as rebel flags and Dixie-themed trinkets. You make eye contact with the seller whose facial expression informs you, an African American, that entering this space was a mistake and that you are not welcome.

All the while, the jaunty tunes of the string band set the soundscape.

This thesis draws from my experiences as an African American woman in the United

States, and it contextualizes instances of prejudice and oppression that many minorities in this country endure, become defeated by, or rise above. I was introduced to the topic of this thesis through my research of blackface minstrelsy and the contemporary manifestations of blackface in American media, animation, comedy, and music. Black stereotypes and media tropes once performed as caricatures on the blackface minstrel stage continue to pervade the racial consciousness of American popular culture today. Blackface minstrel songs, rather, have managed to survive in the repertoires of string band music genres (e.g. bluegrass, roots, old-time, folk, country, etc.) either with racially sanitized lyrics, as instrumental melodies or in their original forms.

My research has led me to discover an emerging community of musicians, scholars, and string band enthusiasts who are educating the world about the Afrocentricity of string band music traditions in the United States.1 Many of those who belong to this collective met at an event in 2005 known as The Black Banjo Gathering. Hosted by Appalachian State University near Boone, North Carolina, The Black Banjo Gathering was organized as a meeting place for

African American banjoists and performers who, more often than not, appeared at string band music festivals and jams around the country as the only black musician in attendance.

Additionally, the gathering was a space for people of all cultures to come together and appreciate black string band history. This event, along with its reunion in 2010, have become catalysts for a discourse which emphasizes the African lineage of the banjo, celebrates the black string band

1 Although I acknowledge the differences between these styles sonically, the performance space in which these genres are performed have similar features, particularly in racial demographic. Additionally, I use Afrocentricity to emphasize the African disaporic significance of string band music history and culture.

3 music traditions practiced today, and acknowledges the confines of the American music history canon.

Statement of Research Problem

This is an ethnomusicological study investigating the black roots music revival and the ways in which black string band music performers are redefining American music today. This work also focuses on how the Black Banjo Gatherings of 2005 and 2010 have manifested a dialogue which acknowledges the forgotten performers of the past and empowers minority performers in the present. Therefore, this study intends to investigate: (1) How is this discourse impacting American popular culture? (2) Are the perceptions of race and music in America shifting? (3) Have the demographics in string band music genres changed amongst performers and audiences? (4) Are we in the midst of a black roots music revival?4

Methodology

Survey

Data collection for this study included surveying 148 volunteer undergraduate students enrolled in music courses at Kent State University. The intent for the survey was to evaluate what participants understood about American music history before the early twentieth century and if they associated instrumental music performance, such as banjo and fiddle playing, with the black experience. Participants were asked questions regarding their awareness of the blackface minstrel industry and were asked questions such as, “Do you know what blackface minstrelsy is?” and “Do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society?” These questions

4 While old-time or folk may also be used to describe the current revival, I intentionally choose “roots music” because of the cultural connotation of the word “roots.” “Roots” suggests not only a reference to orally traditional music from the past, but an embodiment of the culture associated with the music. Additionally, “roots music” refers to various pre-nineteenth to early twentieth century styles of black music such as blues and gospel; genres that I would consider are also being revived in the same movement.

4 were posed to determine how many students recognized blackface minstrelsy’s influence on contemporary American popular culture and whether or not participants could associate blackface entertainment with African American musicians and composers.

Ethnography

Ethnographic data was collected by attending live performances and conducting interviews. The first event was the 2017 Canal Jam on September 23, 2017, which was held by

Penn State Altoona’s Center for Community-based Studies at the Allegheny Portage Railroad

National Historic Site in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. Interviewed at this gathering was co-founder and former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops Dom Flemons and his fellow musician

Brian Farrow. The second performance attended was the American Originals: Volume 2 concert at the Cincinnati Music Hall on November 21, 2017, which featured the voice of Rhiannon

Giddens. Hubby Jenkins, a current member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, was also interviewed. Additional interviews were conducted in person and by phone.

According to a paper recently delivered by independent scholar, Katelyn Best, at the

Society for Ethnomusicology Conference in 2017, conducting archival work through social media may prove to be useful as well. The researcher’s subject area was in Deaf culture hip-hop, known as Dip-hop, and to document the events of the past couple of years in the genre she turned to posts and comments on Twitter, Facebook, and online discussion boards. Through this,

“Social media archiving,” she was able to use the internet itself as an archive and created a cohesive timeline of recent events.5 This methodology has been applied to my analysis of a

Yahoo Listerv called “Black Banjo Then and Now.” Members of this online community co-

5 Katelyn Best. “A Transient Archive: Virtual Ethnographic Research within Deaf Music Studies.” (paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Conference, Denver, CO, October 2017).

5 created the Black Banjo Gatherings and created discussions that developed the black roots music revival.

Theoretical Paradigms

Music Revival

As a banjo scholar, Tony Thomas has suggested that we are currently witnessing a revival of black banjo styles and techniques. 6 The study in this thesis broadens the concept of that revival to include multi-instrumentalist. Therefore, the “black roots music revival” I suggests focuses on the performance experience of all members of black string bands and various black music styles. In her article, “Music Revivals: Toward a General Theory,” Tamara Livingston provides a definition for music revivals.7 This study relies on this definition to describe the revitalization of black roots music in the United States. In the third chapter of this thesis I explore the ways in which contemporary old-time black string band performance illustrates these criteria. Further, I will analyze how performers in this revival are striving to impact American popular culture.

Africanisms

Black music research often involves using the term “Africanisms” to demonstrate the common cultural, ideological, and behavioral characteristics shared between Africans and those in the African diaspora. This term is often attributed to Melville Herskovits, an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist renown for writing the book The Myth of the Negro Past.8 First published

6 Tony Thomas, “Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down,” in Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music, ed. by Diane Pecknold (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 143. 7 Tamara E. Livingston, “Music Revivals: Toward a General Theory,” Ethnomusicology 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999). 8 Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (1941; repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1990). See also, Richard A. Waterman, “African Influence in American Negro Music,” in Acculturation in the Americas, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 207-218.

6 in 1941, this work challenged the racial prejudices held by many researchers of black culture at this time. Herskovits contested the predisposition that African Americans did not have a past; this belief is based on researcher’s assumptions that African Americans disposed of all

“primitive” African characteristics once European cultures “civilized” them in the Americas.9

Herskovits thus applied the terms “Africanisms,” “African retentions,” and “African survivals” to prove (1) the complexity of African cultures and histories; and (2) the enduring existence of

African cultural characteristics in African diasporic life.

The concept of cultural “isms” can be challenging to apply in diasporic studies because it can promote a discourse which lumps cultures into one geographical sound. This is particularly problematic because diversity within one given location becomes diminished or dismissed.

Further, it promotes the segregation of musical elements. For example, to define black music’s polyrhythms as an “Africanism” and its homophony as a “Europeanism” would be an assumption based in generalizations. As Kubik writes in Africa and the Blues,

No serious student of African-American music will subscribe today to all-encompassing formulations such as that “harmony” in jazz and other African American music is “European” in origin, while, “rhythm” is “African” (i.e., a sort of pan-African hodgepodge). One still occasionally encounters the opinion, inherited from early twentieth century writings, that “All African music was originally pentatonic” and that “the Portuguese brought heptatonic harmony to Africa,” as I noticed to my surprise in the discussion following a lecture I gave to a scholarly circle in Chicago on August 20, 1997.10

I am by no means denying the existence of African and European influences on black musical identity. However, I do suggest that describing the music without specifically defining how characteristics have undergone an assimilation process promotes generalizations and

9 I intentionally use the words “primitive and “civilized” as derogatory terms to highlight the prejudice that African aboriginal cultures were inferior in significance and complexity in comparison to that of Europe. 10 Gerhard Kubik, Africa and the Blues (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 105.

7 discrepancies.11 As Richard Waterman writes, “any attempt to deal with the dynamics of musical culture, without reference to the complete kit of anthropological tools for dealing with the dynamics of culture in general, is almost certain to prove unsatisfying, frustrating, and—what’s worse—a plain waste of time.”12 In the context of “Africanisms,” the anthropological tool in which Waterman refers to is the assimilation process. Characteristics of African music did not merely survive in the Americas as “African-isms” but were reinterpreted many times to become uniquely African American. Therefore, within the study I have conducted, one will not find a list of “Africanisms,” nor “African-Americanisms” to define black music; I reserve the research of cultural exchange for another study. Alternatively, this thesis applies a theoretical framework based on the concepts of identity.

Identity

In 2007, Timothy Rice reflected upon and critiqued the definition of identity within the field of ethnomusicology. In an article entitled, “Reflections on Music and Identity in

Ethnomusicology,” Rice discussed his conclusions after selecting 17 articles published in the journal Ethnomusicology between the years 1982 and 2006.13 Sixteen of the articles were ethnographic works and one was theoretical. The goal of the study was to determine the theoretical definition of identity as applied in ethnomusicology and if this paradigm was being built upon in ethnomusicological scholarship. Rice points to Christopher Waterman’s renown

11 The definition of assimilation in which I am referring to is exemplified by Kazadi wa Mukuna in his article “The Process of Assimilation of African Musical Elements in Brazil.” Wa Mukuna defines assimilation as, “the advanced stage of acceptance of a cultural element; a stage at which ‘continuity’ is initiated, while ‘persistence’ insures the latter’s evolution.” Kazadi wa Mukuna, “The Process of Assimilation of African Musical Elements in Brazil,” The World of Music 32, no. 3 (1990): 104-106. 12 Richard A. Waterman, “On Flogging a Dead Horse: Lessons Learned from the Africanisms Controversy,” Ethnomusicology 7, no. 2 (May 1963): 87. 13 Timothy Rice, “Reflections on Music and Identity in Ethnomusicology,” Muzikologija 7 (2007): 17-38.

8 article as the first publication to introduce the concept of identity to ethnomusicology.14 To

Rice’s disappointment, none of the following 15 ethnographic articles written after this work referred to Waterman’s (with the exception of J. Martin Daughtry). Further, none of the authors

(including Waterman) cite theories used in the fields frequently borrowed by ethnomusicologists

(e.g. anthropology, folklore, psychology).15

Rice’s concerns arose again in an article he wrote in 2010, which declared a call for fellow ethnomusicologists to address and define the associations between music and identity as it pertains to the discipline.16 Throughout the work, he refers to the 17-article study that he previously conducted. He suggests that future ethnomusicologists writing about identity must refer to the definition as provided by the single theoretical article he found in his study. Written in 1999 by Thomas Turino, the theoretical article to which Rice refers to defines musical identity by applying the semiotic theory of American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce. Using Pierce’s definition of a sign, Turino suggests, “musical signs are sonic events that create an effect in a perceiver.”17 As a sign, music causes humans to emote the emotions and experiences which create homogeneous behaviors. This phenomenon establishes the social norms within a given culture and therefore fulfills a sense of group identity. Turino also recognizes the multiplicity of identity as conducted by the individual and/or by a group. He writes,

14 Waterman’s ethnographic work follows a Juju music bandleader who balances two identities simultaneously: one as a praise musician with low social-status and one as a successful musical entrepreneur with tremendous wealth. See also, Christopher A. Waterman, “I’m a Leader, Not a Boss’: Social Identity and Popular Music in Ibadan, Nigeria,” Ethnomusicology 26, no. 1 (January 1982): 59-71. 15 As Nolan Warden suggested in 2016, this is not a problem that is exclusive to ethnomusicology. Other cultural studies, such as anthropology and folklore, often encounter difficulties in defining and applying identity as well. See also, Nolan Warden, “Ethnomusicology’s ‘Identity’ Problem: The History and Definitions of a Troubled Term in Music Research,” El oído pensante 4, no. 2 (2016): 1-21, accessed April 1, 2018, http://ppct.caicyt.gov.ar/index.php/oidopensante. 16 Timothy Rice, “Disciplining Ethnomusicology: A Call of a New Approach,” Ethnomusicology 54, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 318-325. 17 Thomas Turino, “Signs of Imagination,’ Identity, and Experience: A Piercian Semiotic Theory for Music,” Ethnomusicology 43, no. 2 (Spring-Summer, 1999): 224.

…[Identities] are the affective intersection of life experiences variably salient in any given instance. Identity is comprised of what we know best about our relations to self, others, and the world, and yet is often constituted of the things we are least able to talk about. Identity is grounded in multiple ways of knowing with affective and direct experiential knowledge often being paramount.18

I agree with Turino’s identity theory and align myself with the belief that musical signs are defined through a cultural lens and can be perceived in a multitude of ways. I would also add that these multiple identities can be experienced simultaneously and can quite possibly conflict with one another as demonstrated by race theories in sociology.

Double-Consciousness Theory

Developed by African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in the early twentieth century, double consciousness theory suggests that people of color are subjected to maintain a balancing act of identities, or consciousnesses, being that they are minorities within American society. Du Bois argues black individuals simultaneously perceive the identity they assume through the black experience and the identity assigned to them by the surrounding oppressive society. In his book, The Souls of Black Folk, he writes,

…[T]his double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.19

Needless to say, double consciousness theory is applicable to all minorities in society. This theory is not only concerned with the notion of multiple and potentially conflicting identities, as

Turino’s identity theory suggests, but also calls attention to the issues of power exerted by those identities.

18 Turino, “Signs of Imagination,” 221. 19 W.E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover Publications) 3.

Afro-Alienation Acts

How does one apply double consciousness theory to musical performance? Building on this concept, Daphne Brooks introduces us to the idea of “Afro-Alienation acts” in her book

Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910. Brooks theorizes how racial oppression affects the performance of individuals from marginalized groups.

She explores how black performers use the stereotypes assigned to black culture as a strategic tool to recreate an empowered sense of self identity. She defines Afro-Alienation acts as “the condition of alterity converts into cultural expressiveness and a specific strategy of cultural performance.”20 Afro-Alienation is a process of self-actualization in which black performers utilize the abusive tactics manufactured by American society, to de-exoticize the black experience, and to defiantly express black identity.

Brooks expounds by adding, “Afro-alienation manifests the counter-normative tactics used by the marginalized to turn the horrific historical memory of moving through space while

‘suspended in time’ not only into a kind of ‘second sight,’ as Du Bois would have termed it, but also into a critical form of dissonantly enlightened performance.”21 She suggests such tactics were exemplified by the African American performance of blackface minstrelsy.22 As an entertainment, blackface minstrelsy was created by white men to exoticize and objectify black people in the United States.23 When African American entertainers were finally given the opportunity to express their own black identity on American stages, they strategically used the besmirching act of blackface as tool in creating their own repertoires and compositions. Black

20 Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006) 4. 21 Ibid., 5. 22 Specifically, Brooks applies Afro-Alienation to of the early twentieth century production In Dahomey by Bert Williams and George Walker. 23 Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, 5.

11 performers intentionally “defamiliarize the spectacle of blackness” in American culture through the use of blackface and thus conducted, what Brooks describes as an Afro-Alienation act.24 This study explores how contemporary string band performers navigate similar trials as they often encounter repertoire that were originally blackface minstrel songs.

Blacksounds

To further explore the dynamics of racial identity and music in United States history I will be applying a theory developed by Matthew Morrison known as Blacksounds. He defines this term as,

the legacies, sounds and movements of African American bodies—both real and imagined— on which blackface performance and popular entertainment was based. In function, the concept suggests the scripting, commodification, and embodiment of these sonic performances by both black and non-black bodies as a vehicle for self-imagination and the construction of race.25

Based on Saidiya Hartman’s idea of “Terror and Enjoyment” from her book Scenes of

Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America¸ Blacksounds calls attention to a discourse which places chattel slavery and blackface minstrelsy at the epicenter of

American popular entertainment and culture.26 With this theory, Morrison invites us to view

American music history in a scope that not only acknowledges African American contributions but the oppression black people have long endured. As a theoretical support for the ongoing revival of black string band music in contemporary American music, I apply Morrison’s theory of Blacksounds as a means of investigating the discourse surrounding the emergence of a black roots music revival and its implications for black musicians. Further, I suggest Blacksounds to be

24 Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, 5. 25 Matthew Morrison, “The Sound(s) of Subjection: Constructing American Popular Music and Racial Identity through Blacksound.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 27, no. 1 (2017): 18. 26 See also, Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth- Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

12 incorporated in the music history classroom to showcase a more accurate depiction of United

States history.

Black String Bands in Black Music Historiography

Black music historiography’s representation of melodic instrumental performance before the development of the blues and jazz is few and far between. Rather, songs and the handheld percussive idiophones and membranophones which accompanied them are typically the focus.27

Instruments such the banjo, fiddle, fife, and even the quills are often addressed in passing which leaves one to infer that such performances were rare. How did this canon come about? According to Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, scholar of the West African fiddle, early researchers of black music avoided documenting dance and fiddle performances due to the music’s sinful associations. As an alternative, researchers focused on black sacred song such as spirituals.

DjeDje writes,

When scholarly research on African American music began during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, music researchers tended to focus on religious music, specifically spirituals, a sacred genre typically accompanied by body percussion. Since most people in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s associated fiddling with secular culture, and the fiddle, through the early twentieth century, was often called the devil’s instrument, rarely was it used to accompany religious music.28

DjeDje goes on to suggest that other scholars were primarily focused on genres such as the blues and jazz because they showcased the fresh and innovative sounds that African Americans were creating at that time. As a result, the beginning of black music scholarship created a canon that significantly impacted the ways in which we view early black performance today.

27 Such instruments include drums, rattles, tambourines, and scrapers (much like the jawbone of a horse). See also, LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America, (New York: William Morrow, 1963). 27 Richard Crawford, “On Two Traditions of Black Music Research,” Black Music Research Journal 6 (1986): 69. 28 Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, “The (Mis)Representation of African American Music: The Role of the Fiddle,” Journal of the Society for American Music 10, no. 1 (February 2016): 1, accessed April 1, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196315000528.

As more black researchers’ contributions were accepted in black music scholarship, the ways in which we perceived black music history changed. Although African Americans were writing about black music since the late 1800s, the acceptance of African American music researchers was scarce until the twentieth century.29 The analyses of spirituals as showcased in the writings of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois were some of the first contributions readily acknowledged and accepted.30

In his article entitled, “On Two Traditions of Black Music Research,” Richard Crawford delves into black music research and emphasizes the progress made once African American researchers were accepted into the scholarship.31 He writes, “It is hard… to imagine anyone today trying to write a serious account of Afro-American musicians without consulting the research of black American writers, for they have established a legacy of enduring significance.”32 The article focuses on two researchers who represent very distinct approaches to recording black music historiography—Eileen Southern and Amiri Baraka.33 Both authors have contributed significantly to black music research. Their differing methodologies contextualize how both authors address black string band performance in their books.

Southern, a full-time professor at Harvard University, was a professional musicologist trained in Western music scholarship. In 1971, she wrote an encyclopedia on black music entitled The Music of Black Americans: A History (1971, 1983, 1999).34 In the work she

29 James Monroe Trotter, who is considered by many the first African American musicologist, published his black music encyclopedia in 1878. His book showcases the talents of America’s first professional black musicians and composers. For more information see James M. Trotter, Music and Some Highly Musical People (Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers, 1878). 30 See, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Wortley, near Leeds: Printed by Joseph Barker, 1846) 14-15; Du Bois, The Souls, 205-20 31 Crawford, “On Two Traditions,” 1-9. 32 Ibid., 2. 33 Amiri Baraka was also known to publish with name LeRoi Jones. 34 See Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).

14 chronicles black music production from the earliest African slaves to the present day. Southern’s work is extensively meticulous and showcases the methodology of a musicologist as well as an expertise in archival research. Baraka, on the other hand, was a political activist and a writer renowned for his literature and music critiques. His book, Blues People: Negro Music in White

America was published in 1963 under the name LeRoi Jones.35 It is considered today a crucial reference for black music identity and analysis. In it he explores the essence of black music by focusing on the discrimination and suffering of black peoples in the United States. As a playwright and poet, Baraka’s language is more colorful and full of emotion when compared to

Southern’s expression. While Southern’s book contextualizes black music by providing an analysis of primary sources, Baraka’s book conceptualizes black music by providing an analysis of black culture. As Crawford compares the two, “Southern’s primary question runs along these line: Within the context of formal and informal music-making in the western world, what have

Afro-American musicians achieved?... [Baraka] ponders questions like these: What qualities of

Afro-American experience give black music-making it special character?”36

In this regard, Baraka’s approach to discussing black string bands is not extensive. In

Blues People he argues that melodic instrumental performance was not noteworthy before the development of the blues. He goes so far to suggest that banjo playing was a rarity and labels the instrument as a mere representation of stereotypical black identity. Baraka writes,

The stereotyped pictures that many of the apologists for the Southern way of life used as flyleaves for their numerous novels after the Civil War, depicting the happy-go-lucky black existentialist strumming merrily on his banjo while sitting on a bale of cotton, were, I’m sure, more romantic fiction than fact. The slave would hardly have had the time sit on his master’s bale of cotton during the work day… [E]ven such an African instrument as the banjo was very scarce.37

35 See Jones, Blues People. 36 Crawford, “On Two Traditions,” 3. 37 Jones, Blues People, 69.

With sarcasm, Baraka highlights the outrageousness of depicting slaves as carefree banjo-playing buffoons. However, he also points to a common misconception that banjo performance was rare.38 He goes on to list the instruments commonly played by slaves and is confident to claim that European instruments were not often played by black people in the United States until long after the Civil War. He notes, “[E]ven the harmonica did not come into common use until after slavery, and certainly the possession and mastery of European instruments did not occur until much later.”39 Here, Baraka disregards the significance of fiddle performance amongst the slave population. Additionally, it is clear that his fascination is centered on the cultural impact of the blues and not the musical performances which preceded it.

This leads me to discussing Southern’s approach to addressing black string bands. She challenges Baraka’s dismissal of slave instrumental performance by providing the earliest accounts of banjo and fiddle performances in the United States. Considering a slave’s time was dictated by their masters, she acknowledges the difficulty of determining how slaves accessed the opportunity to learn and play these instruments. She writes,

One persistent question, for which there seems to be no satisfactory answer, is how the slave, lacking personal possessions and control of his time, developed instrumental skills… To be sure, some of the white man’s instruments were similar to those the African had known in his own country, but the instruments were not identical. In music— as in language, religion, and customs—the African had to adjust to the ways of his white masters.40

Southern provides further details by describing an account in which a slave around 1719 was given an English violin by a Philadelphian Quaker.41 Fiddles were brought to the United

38 Baraka suggests in Blues People that he’d rather focus his analysis on the black music aesthetic rather than tangible instruments. When addressing “Africanisms” in African American performance he writes, “The banjo (an African word) is an African instrument… [b]ut the survival of the system of African music is much more significant than the existence of a few isolated and finally superfluous features. The notable fact is that the so-called popular music in this country of any real value is of African derivation.” Baraka, Blues People, 27-28. 39 Ibid., 70. 40 Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 48. 41 Ibid., 49.

States by British immigrants as early as the 17th century. Accounts such as this suggest fiddles were given to slaves throughout the colonial period.42 Southern points to social events participated by both blacks and whites—"church and house raisings, maple sugarings, cornhuskings”—where black fiddlers would have been expected to accompany dances.43

Therefore, contrary to Baraka’s claim, Southern would argue that European instruments, such as the fiddle, were mastered long before the blues musicians played the guitar.

Both Southern and Baraka’s works are monumental in black music research and are quintessential for any scholar interesting gaining an understanding about black culture in the

United States. My point here is to highlight common misconceptions which exist within the black music narrative and that often influence the ways in which music and race are perceived in the United States; specifically, I recognize the existence of an historical paradigm that disregards banjo and fiddle performance before the twentieth century. As for my own introduction to the black music history, the canon I personally encountered in my youth considerably emphasized the slave song. I learned about the spirituals sung in the fields, the spirituals incorporated in ring shouts and the spirituals utilized as a coded medium in the underground railroad. However, the only professional African American entertainers before the twentieth century that I was introduced to were the Fisk Jubilee Singers—an African American choir from Fisk University who were known for popularizing the spiritual through European aesthetic choral arrangements during the Abolitionist Movement. Although I did not criticize the quality of the information I

42 Southern did acknowledge that the frequency Europeans gifting instruments to slaves is inconclusive given the research. She writes, “How widely the practice of buying musical instruments for slaves was followed during the colonial period is a question that cannot be satisfactorily answered until more evidence come to light.” Ibid., 49. 43 Ibid., 42.

17 received, I yearned for more knowledge about African American instrumental musical performance and I took it upon myself to fill the lacuna.

Goals and Significance

American music history has long been defined by the contributions of European

Americans—particularly that of white men—whilst incorporating token figures from marginalized cultures to represent diversity and cultural exchange. Needless to say, this paradigm omits large portions of American history and buries the acknowledgement of numerous individuals from marginalized groups. Although this criticism is not new, I maintain it is essential that we understand the ways in which students, and the public sphere alike, are comprehending American history. Further, I propose that we hold music history education to a standard which teaches students an accurate depiction of American music history; specifically, we must focus our attention to music majors and future music educators. American music historiography is riddled with blind spots that veil students from accepting the conflict and oppression which defines American culture. American music is more accurately defined as a what Christopher J. Smith calls a, “creole synthesis”—an exchange and combination of cultural ideas occurring for hundreds of years amongst European, Native and African American individuals and communities.44

This thesis counters the outdated American music history paradigm by presenting the black roots music revival as a celebration of the enduring spirit of black music despite systematic racism and an acknowledgement for black culture’s indefatigability for survival and liberation.

In the third chapter I investigate the catalysts of the black roots music revival including the

44 Christopher J. Smith, Christopher J. The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013.

18 twentieth century ethnographic studies of black string bands, the black banjo gatherings of 2005 and 2010, and the success of Carolina Chocolate Drops members. Additionally, this section explores Daphne Brooks theory of Afro-Alienation acts, the ways in which black string band musicians encounters white supremacy, and the methods these musicians apply to navigate predominantly white performance spaces.45 I explore the versatility of Afro-Alienation acts, a theory originally used to describe twentieth century African American blackface performance, by applying it to string band music genres in the contemporary era. Therefore, the contributions of this work lays the precedent for future researchers to apply the term to other contemporary black music genres.

The fourth chapter showcases the results of a survey I conducted which reveals representation of racial identity and music in American popular culture and the ways in which undergraduate students in music classes, particularly music majors, are miscomprehending

American music history. This thesis problematizes the ways in which the American music history canon tokenizes minority contributions and provides solutions these issues: (1) encourage educators to emphasize collaborations between cultures; and (2) to view American history through the scope of Matthew Morrison’s theory of Blacksounds (through the lens of chattel slavery and blackface minstrelsy).

45 The terms white supremacy is defined by Bell Hook’s application of the term. According to Education Oxford Encyclopedia, Hooks uses white supremacy to describe the perpetual reality of being a darker-skinned individual in a world that gives preferences to the lighter-skinned. As opposed to applying the phrase white supremacy in reference to groups or individuals who use overtly hateful rhetoric, such as Neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, Hooks rather uses it to the normalization and systemic continuation of privileges granted to the white race. See also, Barbara Applebaum, “Whiteness Studies,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (June 2016), accessed July 19, 2018, http://education.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore- 9780190264093-e-5.

The following chapter of this thesis focuses on the history of black string band music, particularly that of the banjo and the fiddle. Additionally, I highlight the colonization and persistent exploitation of black musical styles and performance by European Americans, and make direct references to historical incidents from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the mid- twentieth century to corroborate my assertions about such exploitations.

CHAPTER II

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE

In his chapter entitled, “Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down,” Tony Thomas explores why the banjo is no longer associated with black musical identity and chronicles the events leading to the instrument’s depreciation amongst the African American population.46

Upon encountering this title, those unfamiliar with black string band history and its role in

American music may be inclined to ask, “When did African Americans ever pick the banjo up?”

Unbeknownst to some, the banjo is a uniquely American instrument with ancestral ties to West

African lutes, such as the Senegambian akonting and Malian ngoni, and were brought to the

Americas by the slaves of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. For hundreds of years the banjo was primarily played by slaves in the United States and was widely identified as a black musical instrument. Only within the past century has the banjo demonstrated a white racial identity.47

How did this shift in racial identity occur? How has this affected popular American music today? In the following chapter I explore why black string band history has been neglected in the

American music canon and contextualize how this affects the perceptions of black string band identity today. Lastly, I provide a literature review to showcase the vibrant and thorough research which exists on the topic to further emphasize the lacuna between black string band research and

American music historiography.

46 See Thomas, “Why African Americans.” 47 Ibid., 143.

The Banjo

The banjo is a lute that was brought to the Americas, either conceptually or physically, by

West African slaves. By examining the lutes found in West Africa today, researchers can gain insight into the banjo’s mysterious origins. However, it is important to note that an analysis of contemporary African culture is by no means an attempt to take a time machine into the past.

Rather, it is with the recognition of oral tradition’s influence that we must analyze the lutes found in West Africa today. These instruments bare near resemblance in the function, construction, and playing techniques to the lutes once brought to the Americas hundreds of years ago.

In 1975, Dena Epstein published her groundbreaking article, “The Folk Banjo: A

Documentary History.”48 She challenged African diasporic studies by proposing that scholars pay more attention to early African behavior in the Americas and that they focus on how African slaves adapted to become American. In the opening of her article she writes,

Among the most tantalizing questions about African musicians in the New World are those concerning its earliest period. What kind of music did the Africans bring with them when they first arrived on the North American mainland? How long did that music persist in its new environment, and how was it transformed into something we now call Afro- American? Authentic answers to these questions are not at all easy to find, for the published literature on the thirteen colonies says really very little about the black population and still less about its music. Those contemporary documents, which have been examined barely mention them.49

48 Dena J. Epstein, “The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History,” Ethnomusicology 19, no. 3 (September 1975): 359-360. 49 Dena J. Epstein, “African Music in British and French America,” The Music Quarterly 59, no. 1 (January 1973): 61.

Epstein published this material more thoroughly in her book Sinful Tunes and Spirituals:

Black Folk Music to the Civil War.50 By collecting and analyzing travel accounts and journal entry descriptions, Epstein provided the necessary evidence to trace the migration of the banjo from West Africa, through the Caribbean and finally to the southern plantations of the United

States. Her work laid the foundation for banjo organology today and has led scholars to continue ethnographic research in West Africa, specifically Gambia and Senegal, in efforts to discover the obscurities associated with the banjos origins.51 The earliest known account of a banjo-like instrument was documented off the coast of Gambia around the years 1620 and 1621 by an

English captain named Richard Jobson. He notes,

[Africans] have little varietie of instruments, that which is most common in use, is made of a great gourd, and a necke thereunto fastned, resembling, in sort our Bandora; but they have no manner of fret, and the strings they are either such as the place yeeldes, or their invention can attaine to make, being very unapt to yield a sweete and musicall sound, notwithstanding with pinnes they winde and bring to agree in turnable noes, having not above sixe string upon their greatest instrument…”52

Similarly, blues scholar Paul Oliver has built a career researching how West African lutes musicians influenced instrumental slave performance. In his book, Savannah Syncopators:

African Retentions in the Blues, Oliver argues that many scholars who study Africanisms in the diaspora arbitrarily point to the African continent as a reference point of origin.53 In attempts to counter this methodology he preformed an ethnographic study on Ghanaian music performance and searched for specific African musical sensibilities that have managed to survive in America.

The strongest points of the book are found in the extensive description of lutes played by the

50 Dena J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977). See also, Rex M. Ellis, With a Banjo on My Knee: A Musical Journey from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Franklin Watts, 2001). 51 The first slaves brought to the United States were harbored through slave port off the coasts of modern- day Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea coast. See Kubik, Africa and the Blues, 5. 52 Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, 4. 53 Paul Oliver, Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues (New York: Stein and Day, 1970).

23 griots of various Sudanese ethnic groups.54 A griot, also known as a jali, is an oral historian or what J. H. Kwabena Nketia describes as, “a praise singer.”55 Oliver’s fieldwork on griot performance encouraged banjo researchers to explore the hypothesis that griots were instrumentally responsible for bringing the African lute to the Americas and that these lutes became the early banjo prototypes.

Gerhart Kubik does comparable work to Oliver in his book Africa and the Blues, where he explores the influence of African music and culture on the American diaspora.56 He, too, identifies specific West African gourd lutes that were brought to the New World through the

Trans-Atlantic slave trade—e.g. xalam, garaya, akonting, and, bonchundi, etc.57 Kubik describes the reinterpretation of African lute playing amongst slaves once they reached the Americas.

Kubik does agreed with Oliver’s griot hypothesis.

However, recent events in banjo scholarship suggest a different history. Cecelia Conway, certainly a leader in banjo research, has told me personally in conversation “We were wrong,” and explained that the amateur folk lute musicians of Senegambian cultures were much more likely than griots to be captured in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.58 Therefore, the American banjo is presumably based on the folk lutes of West African amateurs and not the lutes of griots.

Although these lutes are similar in construction, the playing techniques, repertoires, and sounds produced differ significantly. As Nketia writes, “the institution of praise singing and historical chants is a very important one, and the role of the griot (praise singer) is a vital one in some

54 Oliver, Savannah Syncopators, 44-52 55 J. H. Kwabena Nketia, The Music of Africa (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974) 45. 56 Kubik, Africa and the Blues, 8. 57 Ibid. 58 Cecelia Conway, interview by author, Cincinnati, April 6, 2018.

24 societies,”59 Curt Sachs’s description illustrates the respect and fear communities have for the individual:

[Griots] importune the rich with either glorification or insults depending on whether their victims are open-handed or stingy. They often roam from village to village in gangs of about a dozen under a chief who is at the same time a seasoned historian and genealogist and knows to the last details the alliances, hostilities and conflicts that united or oppose the families and villages of the country.60

Around 2000, banjo researchers were introduced to a contemporary Jola akonting player from Gambia named Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta who spent his whole life listening to his father playing the folk lute. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) “All Things

Considered,” Jatta recalled the first time he ever heard a banjo back in 1974. “When the football ended, there was this music program from Tennessee, and they called it country music… I watched the program and saw the modern banjo being used. And the sound just sounded like my father’s akonting.”61

Two years before his father’s passing, Jatta learned how to play the instrument from him.

Soon after he began expressing to banjo researchers the similarities between the folk akonting and the banjo. One day when he was reading a banjo techniques book, Jatta was amazed to find that the two instruments had very similar playing techniques. “What struck me was when they mentioned the ball of the thumb and the nail of the index or middle finder, I knew straight away my father was using this same style… This was never a surprise to me, because I have seen this since I was 5 years old.”62 Banjo scholar Greg Adams told NPR in the same interview, “A lot of

59 Nketia, The Music of Africa, 45. 60 Oliver, Savannah Syncopators, 45-47. 61 Greg Allen, “The Banjo’s Roots, Reconsidered,” NPR, August 23, 2011, accessed April 2, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139880625/the-banjos-roots-reconsidered. 62 Ibid.

25 the emphasis up to that point was focused on griot traditions, which is extremely important as part of the conversation as we look to West Africa… But what the akonting did was open up a new line of discourse.”63

Figure 1: Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta, a Jola musician from Gambia, playing a folk akonting. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139880625/the-banjos-roots-reconsidered. Accessed April 1, 2018.

Whether West African lutes were brought to the Americas conceptually or physically is still up for debate within the banjo researching community. President Thomas Jefferson once wrote about his slave: “The instrument proper to them is the Banjer, which they brought hither from Africa.”64 The term “banjer” was often used to describe the banjo-prototype. Written in

1744 by Reverend Cradock in Maryland The, “banjer” is also used in the first known document

63 Allen, “The Banjo’s Roots, Reconsidered.” 64 Cecelia Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995), 58.

26 to describe the instrument’s presence in the United States.65 Epstein does suggest that African instruments were often played on slave ships crossing the middle passage, however the banjo was not amongst them. Music was often used pragmatically on the slave ships to keep slaves moving physically (through humiliating dances) to avoid death or depression.66

Epstein also recovered written evidence that a banjo-like instrument reached the

Americas, specifically Jamaica, in 1640 and from there took about 100 years for the gourd lute to travel from the Caribbean to the United States.67 This account was written by Sir Hans Sloane, who according to Epstein, accompanied the Duke of Albemarie to Jamaica in September 1687.

Sloane is attributed for having drawn the first depiction of the banjo-prototype as illustrated in

Figure 2. He described the experience upon his return to England in 1689:

The Negroes… will at nights, or on Feast days Dance and Sing;… They have several sorts of Instruments in imitation of Lutes, made of small Gourds fitted with Necks, strung with Horse hairs, or the peeled stalks of climbing Plants or Withs. These Instruments are sometimes made of hollow’d Timber covered with Parchment or other Skin wetted, having a Bow for its Neck, the Strings ty’d longer or shorter, as they would later their Sounds… They have likewise in their Dances Rattles ty’d to their Legs and Wrists, and in their Hands, with which they make a noise, keeping time with one who makes a sound answering it on the mouth of an empty Gourd or Jar with his Hand.68

65 Conway, African Banjo Echoes, 58. 66 Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, 11. 67 Epstein, “The Folk Banjo,” 359-360. 68 Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, 29.

Figure 2: Sir Hans Sloane’s drawings of two gourd lutes and a harp in his 1707 book, “A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica.” Sloane refers to the lutes as “Strum Stumps.” Retrieved from http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0814/photo_essay.jsp?page=3. Accessed April 2, 2018.

The Fiddle

According to Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, evidence suggests fiddles appeared in West

Africa around the eleventh and twelfth centuries.69 Much of DjeDje’s work strives to represent the diversity of African cultures and ethnic groups through fiddle performance (e.g. the goge from the Hausa people of northern Nigeria, the gondze and nyanyeru from the Dagbamba people of Ghana and Fulbe people of Senegambia). This defies labeling African culture “as a homogenous group with little differentiation.”70 She asserts that enslaved groups from the

Sudanic regions, where fiddling was prominent, were taken to the Americas. With them, they brought their fiddle music sensibilities and playing techniques.

There are few personal accounts of black musicians during the colonial period and it is assumed this is due to the traumatic shock of slavery’s forcible displacement. However, scholars are aware that a favored social entertainment amongst the American colonists was dancing.

Additionally, dances were accompanied by the violin and by both white and black players.71

Beyond the music played for the militia—fife, trumpet, and drum—dance tunes were the primary instrumental music in the colonies.72

69 DjeDje, “The (Mis)Representation,” 8. 70 Ibid., 11. 71 Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 43-44. 72 Ibid.

Figure 3: Nigerian musician, Masa dan Gado Saminaka, playing the Housa goge.73

Written accounts of black fiddlers exist within the advertisements of colonial newspapers which provide descriptions of slave for sale and runaway slaves. Musical skill appears to be a notable detail to identify a slave. Illustrated in Figure 4 are several accounts from various colonial newspapers from the mid-1700s. Notice how the “Run Away” listings provide more information than “For Sale” advertisements.

73 DjeDje, “The (Mis)Representation,” 6.

TO BE SOLD. A Negro Indian Man, about forty years of age, well known in town, being a fiddler. [June 21, 1748]

… he plays remarkably well on the violin.

… a Virginia-born Negro… can play upon the violin.

… a Negro Man slave, about 38 years old… can read and play on the fiddle.

RUN AWAY… a Negro Man named Derby, about 25 years of age, a slim black Fellow, and plays on the Fiddle with his Left Hand, which he took with him. [Virginia Gazette, May 14, 1772]

RUN AWAY: a Negro fellow named Peter, about 44 years of age… he carried away a fiddle, which is much delighted in when he gets any strong drink. [Virginia Gazette, May 4, 1769]

RUN AWAY: Negro man named Robert… speaks good English, is a fiddler and took his fiddle with him. [New York Packet & American Advertiser, September 2, 1779]

Figure 4: Four “For Sale” slave advertisements, followed by three “Run Away” slave advertisements, in newspapers from the colonial period.75

Slave Entertainment

Perhaps the most renown recreational slave performances, as noted by Epstein, occurred in Congo Squar—a location within city center of New Orleans where slaves often socialized, danced, and made music.76 In February 1819, Henry Latrobe wrote in his diary a description of a banjo-like lute. He writes,

The most curious instrument, however, was a stringed instrument which no doubt was imported from Africa. On top of the finger board was the rude figure of a man in a sitting posture, & two pegs behind him to which the strings were fastened. The body was a calabash. It was played upon by a very little old man, apparently 80 or 90 years old.77

75 DjeDje, “The (Mis)Representation,” 28-29. 76 Epstein, Sinful Tunes, 94. 77 Ibid., 97.

Figure 5: Henry Latrobe’s drawing of the gourd lute he saw being played in Congo Square. Retrieved from https://sites.duke.edu/banjology/the-banjo-in-new-orleans/congo-square/. Accessed, April 2, 2018.

Other public recreational events such as these occurred as early as the colonial period.

One event, known as “Lection Day,” originated in Connecticut around 1750 and lasted in New

England towns up to the 1850s.78 The annual holiday was set to occur on the same day as civilians voted for their government representatives—in the month of May, or June depending on location. Slaves elected their own “governors” (or “kings” in the case of New Hampshire) and were given a vacation from Wednesday to Sunday for the elected “official” to celebrate.79

According to Eileen Southern, Hartford, Connecticut celebrations brought about hundreds of slaves marching on foot or processing on horseback. Instruments such as the banjos and the

78 Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 49-50. 79 Ibid.

32 fiddles were also played. As one white viewer described, “Every voice in its highest key, in all the various languages Africa, mixed with broken ludicrous English, filled the air, accompanied with the music of the fiddle, tambourine, banjo, and the drum.”80

On the plantation, banjo and the fiddle music filled the soundscape of the slave quarters during a slave’s “free time.”81 While sometimes slave masters bought violins to give to the slaves, more often slaves were required to construct their own instruments out of the resources they had on hand. As Southern describes,

[V]arious kinds of materials were used for the fiddles and banjos. Given a good pocket knife, some pine boards, and a gut from a slaughtered cow that has been carefully cut into strips, dried, and treated, a skilled craftsman could produce a fairly good fiddle. In some places, fiddles were made of gourds and the strings and bows were made of horsehair. A banjo might be made with a fruit with a very hard rind, such as a calabash or a gourd, by stretching a thin skin or piece of bladder over the opening, adding two or three strings made from gut, and raising the strings on a bridge. Banjos were also constructed by stretching the tanned hide of a groundhog or wookchuck over a piece of timber fashions like a cheesebox.82

The reason why a slave master may want to distribute violins to his slaves is because plantation owners frequently utilized their slaves for personal musical entertainment. Katrina

Dyonne Thompson’s book Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in

North American Slavery is an excellent source on the topic of forced slave performances.83

Planters required their slaves to play fiddle or banjo for white community festivities. At larger events, plantation owners bet on the performance quality of the slaves’ music and dance.

Marie Jenkins Schwartz suggests in Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in The

Antebellum South that planters often organized dances, or frolics, as an act of dominance to

80 Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 49-50. 81 Ibid., 157. 82 Ibid. 83 Katrina Dyonne Thompson, Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).

33 motivate slaves into working more efficiently.84 For leverage, planters would either promise dances to their slaves for good behavior or threaten to take dances away. Needless to say, slaves preferred to organize their own occasions for dance, performance, and entertainment. These events often occurred at nightfall and were best kept miles away from the plantation in a covert location.85

Agricultural festivities and holidays such as corn-shucking and Christmas were events slaves looked forward to most for dancing and recreation. Dances such as the Cake-Walk, the

Breakdown, Buck dancing, Padding Juba and the Ol’ Virginny (as travestied on the blackface minstrel stage) were originally dances created by slaves. Banjos and fiddles would provide the accompaniment. One former slave recalled,

Corn-shucking was fun. Them days no corn was put in the cribs with shucks on it. They shucked it in the field and shocked the fodder. They did it by sides and all hands out. A beef was kilt, and they’d have a regular picnic feasting. They was plenty whiskey for the niggers, just like Christmas… We used to have frolics, too. Some niggers had fiddles and played the reels and niggers love to dance and sing and eat.86

84 Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Born in Bondage: Growing Up in the Antebellum South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press): 179. 85 Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 166-169. 86 B. A. Botkin, ed., Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 86.

Figure 6: A plantation frolic on Christmas Eve. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/2018646020/. Accessed, April 13, 2018.

Blackface in Perspective

In addition to discovering the intricacies of the banjo’s origin, Cecelia Conway’s work also explores the musical and cultural exchanges between blacks and whites before the rise of the blackface minstrel industry.87 Until the 1830s, African slaves played exclusively the banjo. The earliest documented proof of a white banjoist was a man named Ferguson, who, according to

Conway, taught the instrument to the founder of the Virginia Minstrels, Dan Emmett. Joel

Sweeney, the banjoist for the Virginia Minstrels, was also one of the first known European

Americans banjoists. She writes,

87 Cecelia Conway, “Black Banjo Songsters in Appalachia,” Black Music Research Journal 23, no. ½ (Spring-Autumn, 2003): 149-166.

Before 1840, a man named Ferguson from western Virginia, the Appalachian mentor of the early Dan Emmett, was playing banjo… Like many early Northern minstrels, Southern white banjo players actually learned from blacks. The Sweeneys actually learned from their slaves in Buchingham County, Va., and Furguson’s outspoken circus boss, who described the lively musician as “nigger all over except in color,” associated him with his teachers.88

Blackface minstrelsy is a theatrical form of entertainment attributed to Irish and Scottish immigrants in the United States and is recognized for its dehumanizing mimicry of black people.

Numerous scholars have focused on the topic (including Robert Winans, Bob Carlin, W. T.

Lhamon Jr., Sam Dennison, Robert Toll, William J. Mahar, Dale Cockrell, and Eric Lott).89

Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth Century Blackface Minstrelsy is a complied work which provides readers with a conclusive look inside minstrelsy’s history and legacy.90

Blackface is a performance practice that is widely recognized today for its use of a dark colored burnt cork makeup, which was originally worn by white performers in their attempts to embody

African American caricatures. Performers were also known to draw largely outlined lips around their own and wear coarse wigs made of wool upon their heads. It is in this attire, that blackface minstrels sang songs, played instruments, danced, and told jokes that deteriorated the African

American experience and culture. As a result, the industry created fictional yet detrimental stereotypes about the black race that have lasted into contemporary times. Troupes toured

88 Conway, “Black Banjo Songsters,” 155. 89 See also, Robert B. Winans, “Early Minstrel Music, 1843-1852,” in Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy, ed. by Annemarie Bean, James B. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara, 3-34. (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996); Bob Carlin, The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004); W. T. Lhamon Jr., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Sam Dennison, Scandalize My Name: Black Imagery in American Popular Music (New York: Garland, 1982); Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth- Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Minstrels and Their World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 90 Annemarie Bean, James B. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara, eds., Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996).

36 internationally and were positively received by audiences all over the globe. By the latter-half of the nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy rose to become the most popular form of entertainment in the world.91

Starting as a solo comedic act in the 1820s, minstrelsy became a musical ensemble by the

1840s—most especially due to Dan Emmett and the Virginia Minstrels. Hans Nathan’s book

Dan Emmett and the Rice of Early Negro Minstrelsy is one of the earliest publications to analyze blackface minstrelsy. The work illustrates a history of the industry by focusing on the first minstrel troupe known as the Virginia Minstrels. The leader of the company, Dan Emmett, is often wrongly attributed for having written the song “Dixie,” when in fact it was composed by an

African American family who lived in his home town Mount Vernon, Ohio. This troupe consolidated the minstrel instrumentation, which consisted of banjo, fiddle, tambourine, and bones.92 The banjoist of the Virginia minstrels, Joel Sweeney, is often falsely accredited for haven invented the five-string banjo.93 While he did not, he certainly popularized the instrument.

Older banjos consisted of a gourd body and a varied amount of strings. The five-string banjo was constructed with a circular wooden hoop, much like a cheese box, and had five strings attached.

According to Nathan, the orchestration of the ensemble was based on instruments that were actually played by slaves on the Southern plantations.94 Southern, concurs with Nathan and states that slaves directly interacted with these minstrels in the South. She writes,

To obtain materials for their show, the minstrels visited plantations, then attempted to recreate plantation scenes on the stage. They listened to the songs of the black man as he sang at work in the cotton and sugar cane field, on the steamboats and the river decks,

91 Smith, The Creolization of American Culture, 77-78. 92 Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 153. 93 Carlin, The Birth of the Banjo, 130. 94 Ibid.

and in the tobacco factories. The melodies they heard served as bases for minstrel songs, and they adapted the dances they saw to their needs.95

Even Alan Lomax, ethnomusicologist and author of The Land Where the Blues Began, connects the plantation music performance with white blackface minstrelsy. He goes so far as to suggest this entertainment has influenced contemporary country genres:

[P]lantation music making gave rise to both the blackface minstrelsy, which held the American stage for a century, and to songs in the mountain hoedown style, which are clearly black in style… Old-timey, blue-grass, and country thus are rooted in the African- American accompanied tradition.96

Author James Weldon Johnson concurred when he wrote, “Every Plantation had its talented band that could creak Negro jokes, and sing and dance to the accompaniment of the banjo and the

‘bones’… When the planter wished to entertain his guests, he need only to call his troupe of black minstrels.” He goes on to say that the plantation performance was “counterfeited” by white minstrels in the 1830s.

Eric Lott, a leader in blackface minstrel research and author of the book Love and Theft:

Blackface Minstrelsy and The American Working Class, disagrees with this location. As opposed to its Southern origins, Lott argues that minstrel performance was created in Northern urban areas and refers to this process as minstrelization.97 He suggests minstrels based their performances on observing the Northern African Americans who were either enslaved or freed.

He writes, “We might say that minstrel men visited not plantations but racially integrated theaters, taverns, neighborhoods, and waterfronts—and then attempted to recreated plantation scenes.”98

95 Southern. The Music of Black Americans, 92. 96 Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: The New Press, 1993), 356. 97 Lott, Love and Theft, 40. 98 Ibid., 41.

Lott is also known for his “Love and Theft” paradigm as stated in the titled which suggests the European Americans had “love” for black culture; “love” in this context can also be defined as an allure for exoticism and fascination with obscurity. This “love” was coupled with an overwhelming sense of class insecurity and racial tension. Therefore, “theft” was a biproduct reaction or an anxious performance of social dominance. The paradigm has been criticized for

Lott’s use of the word “love” which connotes a curiosity act of innocence as opposed to the pornographic performance of black body dysmorphia.99

Blackface minstrelsy was accepted amongst audiences in the United States for more than

100 years and lasted in rural areas of the country until the late 1960s. To an American audience in the nineteenth century, this performance was celebrated as a freak show styled variety act that invited white viewers to “glimpse” into the African American experience. However, to an

American audience in the 21th century, the performance showcases a grotesque imitation of

African Americans and reinforces black stereotypes. Therefore, it is monumentally irresponsible to assume that this industry has made a minor impact on contemporary American popular culture and entertainment. As Amiri Baraka intones in Blues People,

It is essential to realize that minstrelsy was an extremely important sociological phenomenon in America… [It] is important if only because of the Negro’s reaction to it. The reasons for the existence of minstrelsy are important because in considering them we find out even more about the way in which the white man’s concept of the Negro changed and why it changed. This gradual change, no matter how it was manifested, makes a graph of the movement of the Negro through American society…100

99 See also, Morrison, “The Sound(s) of Subjection,”16-17. 100 Jones, Blues People, 83

Figure 7: Dan Emmett on the sheet music cover of, “Dandy Jim from Caroline,” published around 1844.101

101 Robert B. Winans and Elias Kaufman, “Minstrel and Classic Banjo: American and English Connections,” American Music 12, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 5.

African American Blackface Minstrels

One element of American entertainment that has been described as an anomaly is African

American blackface minstrelsy. Starting as early as the 1840s, African American blackface performers represented the same disturbing stereotypes as created by white minstrels. As a result, black minstrelsy reinforced to white audiences that such imitations were a reality. But, perhaps more importantly, whilst producing material detrimental to the dignity of their own race and even themselves, African American performers used minstrelsy as a way to access upward social mobility in a dangerously unstable Reconstruction Era.102 By the latter half of the nineteenth century, African American blackface minstrels had established themselves in American show business as reputable entertainers and entrepreneurs.103 As such, black minstrels were popular amongst both white and black audiences around the world.

Robert C. Toll, author of Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century

America, provides us with one of the first thorough publications about blacks in blackface.

Toll’s concerns in the book (published in 1974) are still relevant in blackface scholarship today.104 “Unfortunately,” he writes, “woefully little is known about the average black minstrel. It is even uncertain how many there were.”105 Archival research in this area has the potential to not only change the American music canon, but also reveal the realities of the first professional black entertainment industry in the United States.

102 Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, 214. 103 For example, Billy Kersands was the most popular African American entertainer of the nineteenth century, and upon his death newspaper critics, minstrel peers, and audiences across the world all agreed that Kersands was the best at the profession. 104 See also, James M. Trotter, “The Georgia Minstrels,” in Music and Some Highly Musical People (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1878) 270-282; Eileen Southern, “The Georgia Minstrels: The Early Years,” in Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy, eds. Annemarie Bean, James B. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara, 163-175, (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996); Alain Locke, The Negro and his Music (Washington, DC: The Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936). 105 Toll, Blacking Up, 219.

The most comprehensive sources on this topic are written by Henry T. Sampson, author of the encyclopedia styled Blacks in Blackface: A Source on Early Black Musical Shows and The

Ghost Walks: A Chronical History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865-1910.106 These works chronicle the development of African American performance through the collections of newspaper articles and entertainer biographies. Similarly, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have written a series of books—Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music 1889-

1895, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, ”Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz, and The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African American

Vaudeville—which are excellent resources that draw an historical line from early blackface minstrel performance in the mid nineteenth century to the recordings of blues and jazz in the early twentieth century.107

Jazz and blues performers W. C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Ma Rainey, and Bessie

Smith are all known to have begun their careers on the blackface minstrel stage. The most renown African American blackface minstrel, Bert Williams, is often attributed as America’s first black comedian. He brought blackface performance to film and starred in several silent movies. Williams was fully aware of the early African American minstrels who came before

106 Henry T. Sampson, Black in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, 2 vols. (Plymouth, UK: The Scarecrow Press, 2014); Henry T. Sampson, The Ghost Walks: A Chronological History of Blacks in Show Business, 1865-1910, (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1988). 107 Lynn Abbott and Doug Serogg, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music 1889-1895. (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2002); Lynn Abbott and Doug Serogg, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (Jackson: MS, University Press of Mississippi, 2007); Lynn Abbott and Doug Serogg, The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African American Vaudeville (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2017).

42 him in the industry. In an essay he acknowledges these performers and describes a sense of pride for his own accomplishments and sacrifices. He writes,

I am a successor, not an originator. The Negro has expressed himself upon the stage in a manner that is true to his racial inheritance. When I look back over the list of well- known Negro players, I feel that in relation to our opportunities we have done well… Our race has taken root upon this soil; after two hundred years of struggle upward, we may be apart here, but not alien. And I firmly believe that we have contributed our share to American entertainment…108

Overall scholarship on the musicianship of African American musicians is staggeringly low; many composers and performers have been lost in history. Future scholarship focusing on the first black professional banjoists (e.g. Horace and Alice Weston, James and George Bohee,

Picayune Butler, James A. Bland, Sam Lucas and William H. Lane, also known as “Master” Juba

Lane) and fiddlers (e.g. Thomas Dilward, also known as Japanese Tommy) can provide us insight into early black instrumental performance. More research in this area will reveal the compositions and playing techniques of black minstrel performers and how they compare with their white minstrel counterparts and black amateur musicians.

108 Bert Williams, The Negro on Stage, The New York Age, November 24, 1910.; For more personal accounts and reflections a black performer’s perspective on blackface minstrelsy, see Thomas Fletcher, 100 Years of the Negro in Show Business: The Tom Fletcher Story (1954; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1984).

Figure 8: Photo of blackface minstrel banjoist Horace Weston. Retrieved from http://oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0814/photo_essay.jsp?page=7. Accessed, April 16, 2018.

The Decline of the Black String Band

Tony Thomas thoroughly outlines the events which led to the banjo falling out of favor amongst the majority of the African American population in his chapter, “Why African

Americans Put the Banjo Down.” Similarly, Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje’s article, “The

(Mis)Representation of African American Music: The Role of the Fiddle,” provides us with comparable explanations as to why the fiddle is no longer associated with black performance.109

In summation, both authors allude to three explanations: (1) the rising popularity of the blues aesthetic; (2) urbanization and the rejection of Southern sounds and minstrel stereotypes; and (3) systemically racist recording company and media marketing.

As the popularity of the blues in the rural South increased at the turn of the twentieth century, so did the inexpensive ready-made guitar. By this time, five-string banjo and the guitar only associated with one another in square and buck dancing (a form of flat foot dance). The banjo’s lively tempo encouraged a much different dance than that of the blues guitar.

As Thomas puts it, “…the faster the music, the faster the dancer, the better the dance.”110 Blues dance, on the other hand, required a slower dragging movement which reflected the expressiveness of the blues singer’s tone quality.111 Additionally, the five-string banjo’s timbre and pitch were not favorable for the blues. Banjos in the 1920s used metal strings that were tightened with a high tension, while guitars used thick strings that produced a deep resonating sound. Therefore, the role of the banjo did not fit the aesthetic of the blues. As Thomas writes,

“Traditional African American banjoist produce rhythmic patterns much like riffs paralleling melody, but rarely a different lead to a singing voice or the fiddle.”112

109 DjeDje, “(Mis)Representation,” 1-32. 110 Thomas, “Why African Americans,” 158. 111 Ibid. 112 Thomas, “Why African Americans,” 157.

Within the context of jazz’s development, the banjo influenced the ragtime piano technique of the right hand as the left hand played accompaniment which imitated marching bands. Jazz banjo was most popularized by banjoist Johnny St. Cyr. Jaz, while James Reece

Europe, a jazz composer and bandleader, also commercialized the instrument by incorporating banjoes in his ensembles. The fiddle lasted longer than the banjo in the jazz realm, but its role was eventually replaced by the clarinet. Popular jazz fiddlers recording in the early 1900s included Van Eps and Vess L. Ossman.113

Two waves of migration marked the mass urbanization of African Americans in the early twentieth century. Approximately 1.6 million African Americans relocated in The First Great

Migration (1915-1940) and nearly 5 million in The Second Great Migration (1940-1970).

Migrants were seeking better employment and education whilst hoping to escape the traumatic oppression experienced in the South. They yearned to lead a better life and strove to forget their old or “backwards” Southern traditions such as religion, dress, and language. Furthermore, the sounds and imagery of the banjo and fiddle were marketed in media as a reflection of the romantic and pastoral Antebellum South, which did not appeal as strongly to the descendants of former slaves.114

The 1920s and 1930s designated the beginning of record companies segregating

America’s music.115 As Karl Hagstrom Miller writes in Segregated Sounds: Inventing Folk and

Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow, “At the dawn of the race record trade, many southern dealers were loathing to sell records by African American artists for fear that black consumers would

113 Thomas, “Why African Americans,” 147-149. 114 DjeDje, “(Mis)Representation,” 17. 115 Ibid., 23.

46 drive away white business.”116 The “trend,” as Miller writes, has made a long-lasting effect on

American’s understanding of music and race. Record companies influenced the public’s perceptions of black performance much like the blackface minstrel performers of the nineteenth century.117 The music genres marketed to the African American community included blues, jazz, jug bands, vaudeville, and religious performance such as gospel. Known as “race records,” this music was tailored to be sold to black audiences inhabiting cities in the North, West, and

Midwest. Why were musicians subservient to this exploitative segregation? As DjeDje frames it,

“Because musicians were eager to perform and become well known, most did not question the marking used by record companies.”118 Similar to the motivations of black minstrels, performers at this time took advantage of this lucrative profession in hopes to move up the social ladder.

The independent record company Okeh Records and its producer Ralph Peer were instrumentally responsible for segregating America’s music. Black string bands that played old- time music, like the Mississippi Sheiks, did not fit the “black” sounds that marketed to black audiences and were placed in the hillbilly category instead of race records.119 Another black string band, called The Tennessee Chocolate Drops, were renowned for their virtuosic talents and for having several members in the group who were in their teens. According to Oliver, the name is as “patronizing as ‘Picaninnies,” and was given to them by their record company. In the

1930s, the group sometimes changed each member’s name to gain more appeal to ethnically diverse audiences.120

116 Karl Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) 206. 117 See also, Tim Brooks, Lost Sounds: Black and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 118 DjeDje, “(Mis)Representation,” 18. 119 Ibid. 120 Paul Oliver, Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 104.

White audiences, particularly in middle-class urban areas, were marketed what was known as “hillbilly music.” This included fiddle, banjo, jazz performed by whites, and religious performance such as Southern gospel. The Southeastern country music industry started in the late

1920s and incorporated innovations from jazz, swing, blues, pop, and Western swing. Jimmie

Rodgers, for example, who is often named the “Father of Country Music,” played most of his recordings in blues, ragtime, and jazz styles. Additionally, Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Band made appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and created recordings that placed Earl Scruggs and his 5- string banjo at its core. Simultaneously, dances associated with bluegrass, flat-foot, and square dances utilized banjo and fiddle instrumentation. By the 1950s, white audience’s interest in these nostalgically “rural” sounds revived folk and old-time music as well as 5-string banjo playing.

1960s and 1970s media, in the forms of folk radio and television shoes (e.g. The Andy Griffith

Show, The Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haw), solidified the European American associations with string band music imagery and sounds.121

121 Thomas, “Why African Americans,” 162.

Figure 9: Depiction of a black jazz banjoist on the cover of an Okeh Race Records catalogue. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/resource/ihas.200049069.0/?sp=1&st=single. Accessed, April 8, 2018.

As Thomas writes, “The constant struggle between African Americans and a hostile dominant society and culture creates a need for black music makers to produce music that speaks to their specific needs and historical experiences.”122 Black music cycles through ages of cultural innovation and cultural appropriation. It avoids what Thomas refers to as “white containment” by shifting rapidly and continuing to push the boundaries for newer and fresher sounds. With every innovation, black music is subjected to critique and ridicule until American popular culture capitalizes on its sound, thereby homogenizing black culture. Maureen Mahon, articulates this point in her book Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race:

White Americans’ long-standing fascination with the Negro-as-primitive is intertwined with the enduring practice of appropriation of African American music and style that has been a driving force of American popular culture… Their more easily acceptable versions of black music and their ability to solve the problem of black people in black music do not undercut their talent, but are very real part of their success. White Negroes wear a mask that allows them to experience the excitement of being the dark other, but it is a mask that they can remove if need be. This flexibility is, of course, a luxury no African American can enjoy.123

African Americans have been holding onto the banjo and fiddle for hundreds of years in the United States and only within the last century have they put them down. However, some are still holding on to them today. In Chapter 3, I explore rural banjo and fiddle playing throughout the 1900s and how the surviving musicians influenced the playing styles and motivations of contemporary black banjo and fiddle players today.

122 Thomas, “Why African Americans,” 164. 123 Maureen Mahon, Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 247.

CHAPTER III

BLACK ROOTS MUSIC REVIVAL

In Chapter 2, I chronicled the historiography of black banjo and fiddle performance in the

United States from the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the early twentieth century.

By the time record companies started recording race and hillbilly records, the performance of black string band music traditions amongst the black community had significantly diminished.

However, in rural areas of Appalachia and the Deep South, black string band musicians continued to perform these traditional music styles. While most of the performers of these traditions have passed away, their music can be experienced today through the listening of twentieth century commercial and field recordings. By referring to these recordings, the string band music community recovers the sounds of black old-time string band traditions.

The word “revival” has been used by scholars such as Greg Adams and Tony Thomas to define the modern revitalization of nineteenth century black banjo techniques and styles.124 By broadening the context of this revival to include the full string band, this thesis examines the motivations of black multi-instrumentalist who perform in old-time music styles today.

Additionally, this study analyzes how contemporary black string band performers redefine the sonic and graphic characterizations of black music in the United States with the use of traditional black string band performance techniques and repertoire.

124 See also, Greg C. Adams, “Nineteenth-Century Banjos in the Twenty-First Century: Custom and Tradition in a Modern Early Banjo Revival,” (master’s thesis, University of Maryland, 2012), 15; and Thomas “Why African Americans.”

In her article, Tamara Livingston defines “music revival” as, “any social movement with the goal of restoring and preserving a musical tradition which is believed to be disappearing or completely relegated to the past.”125 More specifically, she uses the phrase “ethnic revivals” to address the issues of power that influence the revitalization of ethnic subgroup traditions. She writes, “In ethnic revivals, the choice of tradition to revive may be influenced by the dialectics between the subgroup and the dominant group from which they desire to be distinguished.”126

With Livingston’s definition above, this chapter recognizes characteristics of the current black old-time string band music revival. The ethnographic work of this study has focused on the development and legacy of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a multi-Grammy Award winning all- black string band whose member—past and present—are applying a rhetoric that challenges the racial consciousness of American popular culture. In the discussion section appearing in the latter half of this chapter, I explore the strategies in which these musicians navigate personal encounters of racism and how they stay motivated to challenge the ways in which American society characterizes race.

125 Livingston, “Music Revivals,” 66-85. 126 Ibid., 68.

The Black Banjo Gathering of 2005

Twentieth century ethnographic studies conducted about black old-time string band traditions play a substantial role in the development of the current revival.127 According to Kip

Lornell, it appeared as though no other researcher was interested in recording the music when he started in 1973. As an undergraduate student at Gilford College in North Carolina, he was fascinated with the blues and interested in finding older black blues musicians who lived around

Greensboro and Chapel Hill. He intentionally avoided the larger highways when traveling through the area in hopes to find shops and gas stations where he could stop and ask locals a few questions.

On a fall day, when Lornell was stopped in Mebane, North Carolina, an interlocutor told him that they knew of a black fiddle player named Joe Thompson. While Lornell was interested in specifically finding blues musicians, he formed cultural connections between blues traditions and the other string music styles he was hearing so much about from the locals. Following this,

Lornell met Joe Thompson, a black fiddler who at that time was semi-retired from playing.128 He told Lornell that every couple of months he still played with his cousin Odell, who played the banjo and lived half a mile away. Thompson invited him to their meetings and from there Lornell began collecting fieldwork recordings of Joe and Odell Thompson, Dink Roberts, John Snipes and others.129 Around the same time in the early 1970s, Bruce Bastin was doing similar work and

127 For a sample discography for black string band music traditions see Chris LH Durman, “African American Old-Time String Band Music: A Selective Discography,” Music Publications and Other Works (2008): 797-810, accessed March 17, 2018, http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_musipubs/5. 128 According to Cecelia Conway, “Joe Thompson used to play the fiddle for workings and house parties in the area.” See Conway, Cecelia. African Banjo Echoes, 11. 129 Christopher (Kip) Lornell, interview by author, March 15, 2018. See also, Kip Lornell, “Old-Time Bounty Music in North Carolina and Virginia,” in Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music, ed. by Diane Pecknold (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013) 171-190; and Bob Carlin, String Bands in North Carolina Piedmont (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2004).

53 began looking for North Carolina Piedmont blues players as well.130 By realizing the cultural associations between blues traditions and string performance, he too encountered these musicians and audio recorded his fieldwork.131

These select Piedmont musicians went on to become the central focus of Cecelia

Conway’s ethnographic study in her book, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk

Traditions.132 This work, published in 1995, not only describes the history of the banjo and its connections to West African lutes, but also discusses her fieldwork experiences with twentieth century black string band traditionists from North Carolina and Virginia. In 1998, Conway released an album of her fieldwork recordings called Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina &

Virginia.133 By bridging the history of the banjo to modern musical performance, Conway catalyzed a public interest in revitalizing black string band music traditions.

In March of 2004, Tony Thomas founded an online Yahoo listserv known as Black Banjo

Then and Now. Thomas was a guitar player of many genres for most of his life and was inspired by Conway’s book to pick up the banjo. In an early post introducing himself to the members of the listserv, Thomas wrote “One thing that encouraged me to get a banjo was reading Cece

Conway’s (some of us know her as Cece Thompson) great book African Echoes in the

Appalachians which everyone should own.”134 He went on to express the discomfort he often felt on the other Banjo listservs, who were predominantly white and occasionally uninviting to the

130 See also, Bruce Bastin, Crying for the Carolines (London: Studio Vista, 1971). 131 Many of the field recordings of Bastin’s study are featured on the album curated by Cecelia Conway entitled Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia. 132 Cecelia is also referred to as Cece Conway and Cece Thompson. 133 Various Artists, Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40079, 1998, CD. 134 Tony Thomas, post to “Introducing Myself,” Black Banjo Then and Now, Yahoo! Groups, March 30, 2018, accessed June 2, 2018, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BlackBanjo/conversations/messages/3.

54 black cultural identity of the banjo. Additionally, Thomas was dissatisfied with being the only black person in attendance at banjo festivals. He writes,

I know I have been playing old timey and bluegrass on guitar since the 1960s and have recently played banjo at a few festivals, and when I get into correspondence, I can always reference myself easily. Even if there were hundreds of thousands at the event, I can just say, hey I was the Black guy there, or the Black guy that played at the work shop, because there were no others.135

With 568 members today, this virtual space continues to create an opportunity to build a community for black banjo players and those interested in the tradition.136 In his article about the development of the listserv, Thomas writes,

I started Black Banjo Then and Now because I thought Black banjoists I kept meeting online need to get together. As well, we soon found other banjoists and scholars need a place to discuss the African origin and Black legacy of the Banjo… Black Banjo Then and Now is a forum for old-time music players, scholars, and thinkers who remained concerned for the history and struggles, the Black and white that pervade the banjo and its music.137

The Black Banjo Gathering came about with the same intentions in mind. Cecelia

Conway and Tony Thomas started working together to bring the gathering into fruition. As an

English professor at Appalachian State University, Conway incorporated the Black Banjo

Gathering as one of the events for the Appalachian State traditional music week. Several members of the listserv at this time included a musician from Washington D. C. named Sule

Greg Wilson and a musician from North Carolina named Rhiannon Giddens. After Sule was brought on board the project by Thomas, Giddens was asked to create a website for the event. At that time, Giddens was working for a corporate advertising company and had acquired some useful website building skills.

135 “Group Information,” Black Banjo Then and Now, Yahoo! Groups, accessed June 2, 2018, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BlackBanjo/info.” 136 Ibid. 137 Tony Thomas, “Why Black Banjo: They Banjo List Serve,” The Old Time Herald 9, no. 7 (Spring 2005), accessed March 7, 2018, http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-9/9-7/black-banjo.html.

Concurrently, Dom Flemons was in Arizona finishing his undergraduate degree in

English and met Sule while performing at a local coffee shop. Sule was living in a suburb of

Phoenix known as Tempe. In an interview I conducted with the musician, Flemons reminisced,

“I met [Sule] at a weekly coffee house I used to go to over at the park. I was one of the few

African American performers that would be at this and I was also the youngest. When I saw

Sule, he approached me and told me they were going to have an event.” Flemons recalled that at this time, plans for the gathering were still in the beginning stages. He said, “Sule and Tony had started talking about bringing all the black banjo players that were scattered across the country all together for an event.”138

Flemons was not yet a member of Thomas’ listserv and personally found it difficult to find black banjoists to connect with. “At that time, it was 2005. It was still before you had

MySpace and Facebook and there were a lot of connections being band via the internet that just weren’t there previous,” he explained. Flemons ultimately told Sule that he was unable to attend the gathering because he was short of funds. “[T]hen Sule reached out to me a few months later and he told me I really should go and that also they got the money together to help me fly out of

Phoenix.” Flemons took them up on their offer and arrived at the event full of expectations. “I was brought in with this intention because it was two things,” Flemons told me, “It was the academic event that was part of [Conway’s] world and it was Tony Thomas and Sule’s world of the Black Banjo Gathering, which was to get the black banjo players together so we could meet each other so we would know that we’re not alone in this world and that would be powerful in itself.”139

138 Dom Flemons, interview by author, March 6, 2018. 139 Ibid.

The Black Banjo Gathering took place April 5 through April 9 in 2005. The event was organized with conference-like lectures, performances and workshops, as well as communal jam sessions. One individual celebrated as a living legend at the event was Joe Thompson, who was in his 80s at this time. Justin Robinson, another founder and original member of the Carolina

Chocolate Drops and fellow North Carolinian, came to the event on the last day for the purpose of meeting and learning from Thompson. Others to make an appearance included Mike Seeger,

Bela Fleck, Ross Ellis, Tony Trishka, folk akonting player Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta and

Malian griot Chika Hamala Diaphee. Flemons approximated about 350 to 500 people attended that weekend with a dozen or so being “black banjo players in varying degrees.” He explained,

“Some were professional and some were amateurs that just wanted to be a part of this. Some were African American-centric and some were more Afrocentric.”140

140 Flemons, interview.

Figure 10: Jam Session at The 2005 Black Banjo Gathering. Performers include (from left to right) Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, Joe Thompson and Bob Carlin. Retrieved from https://www.downhomeradioshow.com/2007/12/interview-with-the-carolina-chocolate-drops/. Accessed June 1, 2018.

The event proved to be life-changing for Flemons. “It was kind of like Woodstock where it apparently held together just enough but the affect it had on all the people involved was very powerful,” he told me, “We were all very inspired to figure out how to keep the feeling of the gathering and the elevation of black string music, not just strictly old-time music, but being a guiding force for showing all the roots of every popular music. Sankofa Strings was the first attempt at that.” Sankofa Strings was a band that formed by the end of the gathering consisting of

Dom, Rhiannon and Sule. According to Flemons, Giddens flew out to Arizona and met with him and Sule to start practicing out of a garage during in summer following the gathering. They

58 recorded their first demo tape as Rhiannon worked on the group’s website, “and from there people were instantly drawn into it.”141

Figure 11: Members of Sankofa Strings. Individuals include (from left to right) Greg Sule Wilson, Rhiannon Giddens, and Dom Flemons. Retrieved from https://clclt.com/charlotte/sankofa- strings/Content?oid=2141147. Accessed June 1, 2018.

Another significant occurrence after the gathering, was when Justin Robinson exchanged contact information with Joe Thompson. Soon after, Robinson began visiting Thompson regularly in hopes of learning as much as he could about the music. Next, Giddens joined them and every Thursday night the three began playing the fiddle and banjo together. Flemons explained, “It was essential to play fiddle and banjo together. Joe didn’t solo fiddling like you hear with a lot of old time fiddlers. A banjo player needed to be present and know the songs.

141 Flemons, interview.

Then you’d have a real session with Joe.”142 About three months later, Flemons, who was newly graduated from college, moved to North Carolina to follow the music and Joe’s guidance. Justin was interviewed on a podcast called Uncivil and described the experience of learning from Joe.

And we were in the country, and we were in North Carolina. And we were in a hot-ass house in April, because he's old. He was old at the time, you know how old people keep their houses sometimes. It was the three of us. It was me, Dom, and Rhiannon, and sometimes Sule. And his wife would be there, and it was an all-black space and that is the context, in which it sort of, its genesis.143

According to Giddens, the group began calling themselves the Carolina Chocolate Drops in admiration of Howard “Louis Bluey” Armstrong, a fiddler from the early twentieth century black string band called the Tennessee Chocolate Drops. She said,

We started to call ourselves after the Tennessee Chocolate Drops because we admired Louie Bluey, or [Howard Armstrong] to become something that could champion Joe’s music. So, a lot of the early songs that we did were Joe’s songs or songs from that area. And that was all we really thought about doing and it just kind of took off, you know?144

In 2009, the group recorded an album with Thompson entitled Joe Thompson and the

Carolina Chocolate Drops. Sonically, the band was playing in a style of string performance that was unique to the North Carolina Piedmont area. Flemons expressed to me that he was required to forget everything he knew about playing the banjo in order to capture Thompson’s sound. He began exploring and mixing the string band music styles of various country blues musicians, the

Mississippi Sheiks and The Memphis Jug Band. As multi-instrumentalists, the members of the band were quite versatile: Giddens on five-string banjo, fiddle, and kazoo; Flemons on guitar, four-string banjo, harmonica, jug, snare drum, and bones; and Robinson on fiddle, autoharp and

142 Flemons, interview. 143 Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika, hosts, “The Song” Uncivil (MP3 podcast), Gimlet Media, November 15, 2017, accessed June 8, 2018, http://www.gimletmedia.com/uncivil/the-song#episode-player. 144 Rhiannon Giddens, interview by Kronos Quartet, “Rhiannon Giddens – Kronos’ Fifty for the Future Composer Interview” (video), November 22, 2017, accessed June 1, 2018, http://kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the- future/composers-detail/rhiannon-giddens#score.

60 occasionally would even beat box. This unique sound quality set them apart from other string bands and yet maintained the sonic integrity of Thompson’s music.

Figure 12: Members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and their mentor, Joe Thompson. Individuals include (from left to right) Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, Joe Thompson, and Justin Robinson. Retrieved from https://www.ourstate.com/carolina-chocolate-drops/. Accessed June 1, 2018.

The first time the band performed they received a standing ovation and from there the success of the group took off. In 2010, after nearly five years of performing with one another,

The Carolina Chocolate Drops won a Grammy award for Best Traditional Folk Album.145 The title of the album, Genuine Negro Jig, is the name of a tune they cover on the album. The instrumental piece is also known as Snowden’s Jig and is said to be transcribed by blackface minstrel performer and founder of the Virginia Minstrels, Dan Emmett.146 The name Snowden is in reference to the Snowden family, an all-black string band out of Mount Vernon, Ohio, and the hometown of Emmett. While the group was aware of the history of the tune, they say they did

145 The Chocolate Drops were also nominated for a Grammy again in 2012 for their Leaving Eden. 146 Dan Emmett is also known to have taken the melody of the song, “Dixie” from the Snowden family.

61 not choose the title to send a message. In fact, they were surprised the record company allowed them to use it. In an interview with NPR, Justin explains,

We knew that [the title] was going to be provocative. That was done intentionally. But what we're not trying to do by naming it that is to say anything in particular. I mean, if it starts a dialogue either about our music or about… what it means… what is genuine… I mean, great. But us as a band, as the Carolina Chocolate Drops, did not have a specific agenda as what we wanted people to take away from that title.147

Giddens expressed that the rhetoric for using the title embodies the word, Sankofa, which as one may recall, was used in the name of her former band, Sankofa Strings. Sankofa is a word in Twi, a language spoken in Ghana by the Akan people. It refers to an ideology based on the

Akan symbol of a bird facing forward but looking backwards. This symbolizes one’s willingness to return to, or the inspiration to return to, a forgotten or unrealized past. Sankofa also parallels the Akan proverb, “Sε wo wirε fi na wo san wε kyi kɔ fa a, yen kyi,” which literally translates to,

“If you forget and you go back for it, it is not frowned upon.” Giddens described the proverb as,

“Go back and fetch it and bring it forward,” which alludes to the band’s dedication to reclaiming black music from the past, that which has either been stolen or forgotten.148

The Black Banjo Gathering Reunion of 2010

Around the same time that the Chocolate Drops won their Grammy, Cecelia Conway contacted Dom Flemons with the interest of making a five-year reunion for the gathering. Tony

Thomas got involved with the reunion through Flemons. “I needed Tony to be there because of his role in the Black Banjo Gathering in the first place and I know he needed to be a part of it so then it became a kind of trifecta with the three of us coming together to get the programs together.” In attendance at second gathering were The Ebony Hillbillies, another all-black string

147 Terry Gross, “Carolina Chocolate Drops: Tradition From Jug to Kazoo,” NPR, November 22, 2017, accessed June 1, 2018, http://kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future/composers-detail/rhiannon-giddens#score. 148 Ibid.

62 band out of New York City. Corry Harris and Angela Wellman, Blind Boy Paxton, and Hubby

Jenkins also made an appearance.149

Jenkins, a current member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is a musician originally from the New York folk scene. His interest in playing the blues evolved into a fascination with the banjo and early black music history. I interviewed him about his experiences at the reunion. “I think every black person who picks up a banjo or starts playing this old-time stuff has a curious time when they think they are the only one and so to have something like the black banjo gathering blew that wide open,” he told me, “A black person who plays the banjo was a big deal for me, was momentous. I didn’t realize there was someone who was still doing it.”150 The experience was certainly educational for the musician, who was twenty-two years old at the time.

I asked him how he felt about the event’s balance of academic lectures and communal performances. “I thought there was a good balance and even the lectures that were given had a panel where two of them played and were still knowledgeable and anecdotal as academics. The best part is always the jamming where you learn some stuff. You played for a couple of hours and you hope you remember in the morning.”151

149 Flemons, interview. 150 Hubert Jenkins, interview by author, March 5, 2018. 151 Jenkins, interview.

Figure 13: Current member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hubby Jenkins. Jenkins is also a solo musician of blues and gospel styles. Retrieved from http://www.hubbyjenkins.com/bio/. Accessed June 1, 2018. Photo by Orlando Camacho.

For Flemons, an important part of the event was to have it documented. He invited a man name Bill Steber, a photographer who specializes in tin-type photography. Flemons said, “I told

Bill that I had this dream to get all of the black banjo players at the gathering and get them into a portrait in the style of the great portrait of, ‘A Great Day in Harlem.’ We got everybody together and then we did one where we got a many people from everybody that was there.” Flemons also told me Joe Thompson was also at the event. “He was physically not able to get around as well.

So, 2010 wasn’t enjoyable for him, that was tough, but we still got a great photo with him.”

While the original gathering and the reunion were “different in outlook” from one another, as

Flemons said, they were both still based on empowering black string band musicians.152

152 Flemons, interview.

Figure 14: Tin-Type Photograph of participants at the 2010 Black Banjo Gathering Reunion mentioned by Dom Flemons. The portrait style was taken in reference of the photo known as “A Great Day in Harlem.” Photo by Bill Steber.153

153 “Participants at the 2010 Black Banjo Gathering,” Facebook photo, April 14, 2010, accessed June 1, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1423789998042&set=pb.1331511176.- 2207520000.1530111442.&type=3&theater, Photo by Bill Steber.

Critical Reflections

Ethnographic Analysis

Watching the band develop was an amazing sight for Flemons. He accredits the Black

Banjo Gatherings as catalysts for the ideology on which the Carolina Chocolate Drops rely. He explained,

The idea that we were not just African American people playing string band music, but we were informed and we were able to contextualize the music in a way that was easy for people to understand. That was a very powerful effect. I always give credit to the gathering that we were giving something bigger than we were actually doing. There was a bigger take away than what they were receiving that was not just us playing our music. It was all of the powerful energy of the black banjo gathering funneled into the groups that we formed… We never tried to hide the fact that we had different kinds of notions about how we looked, or how we acted, or how powerful our voices could be. It was through our education and through our studies. It was a very powerful journey. Of course, there was that unspoken bond of trust that everyone who was at the gathering shared. That lead to the idea of African American banjo playing in string band music and all the different factions that lead to all of us being connect in one way.154

Flemons left the Carolina Chocolate Drops and started his solo career in 2014.

Nevertheless, he continues to apply the same philosophies of the band to his performances today.

I first met Flemons at the 2017 Canal Jam on September 23, 2017. This event was held by Penn

State Altoona’s Center for Community-based Studies at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National

Historic Site in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. Rather than a typical string band festival, the activities throughout the day reflected a series of academic led lecture recitals.155 Each performance at the site was held in a theatre that was capable of seating approximately 100 people. When Dom performed, the place was packed therefore requiring me to sit on the steps of the aisle. Glancing

154 Flemons, interview. 155 The interlocutors I spent most of my time with at the event, locals from the area who brought their instruments in hopes to play, were displeased with the scheduled events and expressed they would have been more satisfied if the Canal Jam arranged more occasions to jam.

66 around the small theatre venue, I realized that I was one of the only African Americans in attendance, and certainly the youngest at twenty-four years of age.

Throughout the performance, Flemons played the panpipe, harmonica, guitar and banjo.

Alongside him was Brian Farrow, a twenty-five-year-old black bassist, fiddler and vocalist who began playing old-time music professionally after meeting Flemons.156 The repertoire consisted of varying musical styles including blues and old-time, showcasing both early twentieth century repertoire and original pieces. Flemon’s instrumentation varied depending on the song. Between each tune he provided an historical and cultural context for every composer and every theme. He talked about slavery, blackface minstrelsy, the reconstruction era, the Great Migration and his upcoming project about black cowboys, all the while emphasizing the significance of black musicians in string band music performance.

Figure 15: Dom Flemons (right) and Brian Farrow (left) performing at the 2017 Canal Jam. Photo by Maya Brown, September 2017.

156 Brian Farrow, interview by author, September 23, 2018.

After the performance, as I gathered my things in preparation to approach Dom Flemons to ask for an interview, an older white woman who sat near me throughout the concert faced me in excitement. “Are you with the band?” she asked me enthusiastically. I realized that other than the two performers on the stage, I was the only African American left in the theatre. Because I am black, she assumed I was in the band. Though her intentions certainly did not appear threatening to me, this encounter made me curious about black string band performers’ experiences in white performance spaces and how they navigate such situations on a consistent basis.157

When I went to see Rhiannon Giddens perform on November 21, 2017 at the Cincinnati

Music Hall, I had similar reservations. Giddens, who began her solo career in 2013, still maintains and performs with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The formality of this concert differed considerably from the Canal Jam. The event was set at a recently restored nineteenth century theatre with a large stage, a balcony, and hundreds of seats. I observed the sea of audience members in attendance, noticing the appearance of less than ten people of color including myself. Unlike most of her performances, Giddens did not play the fiddle, nor the banjo in this concert. Rather, she was featured as a solo vocalist with the Pops Symphony

Orchestra. Other performers joining her were the Steep Canyon Rangers, Pokey LaFarge, and an

African American tap dancer named Robyn Watson.

The purpose of the event was to record an album entitled “American Originals: Volume

2.” In 2015, Volume 1 of the series featured the songs of Stephen Foster, a white composer of

157 In my interview with Hubby Jenkins, I told him about this encounter and he expressed he had experienced a similar situation in his career. After auditioning for the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Jenkins was invited to watch the band perform a show on their last tour with Justin Robinson. As Jenkins watched the performance in the wings of the stage, a white woman approached him and asked if he was in the band. In response he told her, “What? They are on stage right now!” Jenkins’ experience, as well as my own, suggests that African Americans are expected to exist in these performance spaces only as the entertainers of white audiences, not as integrated members of the audiences.

68 blackface minstrel, Civil War, and parlor songs.158 The representation of Foster on the album was with high praise for his contributions to American folk music repertoire. Volume 2, on the contrary, presented songs of African American performers and composers including James P.

Johnson, Shelton Brooks, James Reese Europe, Bessie Smith, Eubie Blake, Will Marion Cook and W. C. Handy. The show was marketed as an opportunity to acknowledge the African

American composers who are often overlooked in orchestral concert repertoires and the music history books. Much like Flemons, Giddens used the interludes between songs to contextualize the cultural and historical significance of every tune she performed. More particularly, she emphasized the lost history associated with the select black composers and identified the importance of acknowledging their contributions.

Education was not only integrated into the concert, but it was also essential for the performance to occur. However, beyond the enlightening material presented by Giddens, the show struggled to represent the contributions of the featured African American composers with any real validity. For example, as a gesture to recognize the African American musicians in the repertoire, the production placed a rolltop desk on the right side of the stage with framed photos of five black musicians.159 At the beginning of the performance, several presenters referred to the desk as being a symbolic representation of acknowledging performers who are forgotten in

American popular culture.

Although the production meant well by presenting the message in this way, the desk instillation and its symbolism were confusing and unrelatable to the performance. Even if one was placed in a seat directly in front of the desk, the size of the photos was too small to

158 Dom Flemons was a featured artist on American Originals: Volume 1. 159 I acknowledge that Rhiannon was more than likely not involved with placement the desk on stage. In fact, I found that her role in the production as a spokeswoman for the underrepresented musicians was a much more symbolic and educational act than the desk arrangement accomplished.

69 distinguish the musicians. The photos stood with no names placed underneath them, leaving the audience—most of whom never heard of the musicians—to guess the faces of the acknowledged.

I, myself was only able to recognize the faces of Will Marion Cook, Bessie Smith, and James

Reece Europe. In other words, this small gesture provided no context to the music, added no historical value, and left the audience wanting more to celebrate these figures lost in history. The production applied a common approach to representing African American contributions in

American culture; this approach highlights token figures without providing the oppressive circumstances that these individuals had to persevere through. As I took a picture of the desk at the end of the concert with my camera and squinted at the photos of these brilliant individuals, I was overcome with a sense that the educational significance of the performance would have been lost without the efforts of Giddens that night. Her role that evening as a talented vocalist was indeed entertaining, but akin to Flemons, her educational message was aligned with the same philosophy of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Black Banjo Gatherings.

Figure 16: Desk with the rather small framed photos of the black musicians featured in the repertoire performed by Rhiannon Giddens and others at Cincinnati Music Hall. I could only recognize three of the five musicians. The photo in the top right of the desk is W. C. Handy, the photo at the bottom right on the desk is Will Marion Cook, and the photo in the center of the desk is Bessie Smith. Photo by Maya Brown, November 2017.

Theoretical Analysis

Justin Robinson was the first of the original members to leave the Carolina Chocolate

Drops right after winning their Grammy Award in 2011. In his interview on November 15, 2017 for the podcast Uncivil, Robinson expresses his passion for string-band music performance and he also reveals the reason why he left the group. As a North Carolinian, Robinson was always infatuated with the banjo. “[T]he sounds of the banjo are always around whether you want to hear them or not,” Robinson explained, “Purely, it was a sonic love affair at the beginning, and then I learned more about the history later.” Working the Joe Thompson and playing music with

71 the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Robinson deeply valued the mission of the group. He said, “I thought it was part of a larger story we were telling. The story of how things are misappropriated, and then resold and repackaged with their original contents sort of hollowed out.” Robinson was asked how he navigated performances for white audiences who invited him to, “dehumanize [himself] for profit, for their pleasure, to deepen their sense of identity.” The interview referred to these situations as, “coon spaces.” Robinson related his performance experience to what it feels to be a minority in America. He responded,

You're sort of hitting on the head what it means to be black in America or indigenous in America or sort of any other group who's having to navigate these things about how to deal with sort of whiteness and keep your own humanity at the same time which can be complicated. Our ancestors certainly figured out how to do it, and I don't think I'm any less smart than they are. And so we're talking about these coon spaces, as you call them now. As the Chocolate Drops we have played in many such a space. Spaces that I'd rather forget. It was… it got weird, and it continued to get weirder.160 Robinson goes on to describe an experience he encountered with the Carolina Chocolate

Drops at a bluegrass festival in Charleston, South Carolina. The festival took place on a plantation known as Boone Hall. “Boone Hall is one of the first plantations that are in, that is in

Charleston. A big, fancy place—like Gone With the Wind Tara kind of plantation.” As soon as the band arrived at the location, Robinson had a sickening feeling.

[T]here was nothing but white people in there. So, that was like, "we might be doing something wrong." [laughs] That's what I felt, in that moment. I was like, "This… the irony is not lost on me that we are at a plantation playing fiddle and banjo for an all-white audience in Charleston, South Carolina." And I was like, “This is so palatable; they love it because it makes them feel comfortable.” I walked through the crowd to go and get something to eat from one of the concession stands, and I don't know how many times I heard the n-word, like as I walked through the crowd. It was soul-crushing. This feels like, not narrative disruption. This feels like replication.

This was not the only experience that Robinson encountered like this. He started resenting the audiences and eventually the music. He decided he could no longer continue playing the music.

160 Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika, hosts, “The Song”

And so that, then that started to mess with my own feeling toward the music, which I really couldn’t handle. I like the music. I just do, as a me human being Justin Robinson. I like how the music sounds. So it was the publicness of that was messing with that love. I can’t in good conscience play old time music in public. And I haven’t for quite a while. I stopped playing the music pretty much altogether.161

Robinson still struggles with the emotional trauma of performing string band music. Further, he exemplifies one strategy to navigate the challenges of string band performance by avoiding the music all together. At the end of the interview he explains that since he bought a house in North

Carolina, he has finally started playing the banjo again by himself. “I can conjure up my own memories of playing with Joe. That's who I learned those songs from. That's sort of my most, my deepest connection to this music is through him. It connects me to, it connects me back across the ocean to African ancestors. And I can appreciate it, its sound, it sounds good.”162

Robinson’s relationship with old-time string band music and its performance spaces have been severely detached due to his traumatizing encounters with white supremacy. As Robinson points out, many of his performances have placed him in the position of serving an entirely white audience who ruled his right to belong in that space. Without the service of playing his music,

Robinson and other African Americans performers are uninvited to exist amongst their audiences and simultaneously subjected to repeat these traumatic experiences.

In the interview I conducted with Hubby Jenkins, he told me about similar experiences in both rural and urban locations. “I remember, I would play St. Patrick’s Day gigs here in New

York in bars and people would shout, ‘Great job, Nigger.’ They just yelled that.” He recalled another incident after a performance when, “some guy came up and said, ‘Nice show Nigger.”

One occurrence happened to Jenkins when he was talking about the prison system during a show and white audience members yelled out, “Hey it’s hard for white people too,” and ‘It’s not going

161 Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika, “The Song.” 162 Ibid.

73 to change,” or “I didn’t come here for this.” Jenkins continues to encounter incidents such as these today. “I had a lady tell me she knows the names of all eight black kids in their school system last week in Michigan. I was like, no girl. That’s not cool.”163 He rationalizes the bigoted behavior by recognizing the history of American music and how sounds became racially segregated.

Just being black and playing this music brings its own level of subversiveness because there are so many reasons why we have moved away from this music between the record industry in 1927 creating race records and hillbilly records between the great migration weaving and associating the innovators moving forward musically and creatively and the voice of white people saying, “This is ours now.” So just being there and playing this music has its own weight and being accessible and playing music opens up a door for people to feel comfortable to talk about race and they are not necessarily trying to be insulting but they don’t know. So it’s part of the gig.164

Jenkins’ testimony showcases an expectation for bigoted behavior at his performances when he says, “[it]’s part of the gig.” Nonetheless, he combats the aggression he receives by educating his audiences about the painful realities of the African American experience from the past and present. Also, he experiments in his performances by singing the original lyrics of songs that exhibit racial slurs. “I had an idea to play minstrel songs and learn the lineation of songs,” he told me. “One I found was ‘Run Nigger Run’ that turns into a fiddle song ‘Run Johnny Run.’ At first it was a slave song warning us.” According to Jenkins the original lyrics were, “Nigger run right into the pasture. The white man runs, but the Nigger runs faster.” A later version of the tune sang, “Song folks say a Nigger won’t steal, I caught three in my cornfield. One had a bushel, one had a peck, one had a rope that was tied around its neck.” He expressed that even with providing the historical and cultural context of the song, audiences were not receptive to his performance.

163 Jenkins, interview. 164 Ibid.

“I played it at one show. It did not go well,” he expressed. Jenkins assumed that the racial slur was too jarring for the audience to hear over and over again.165

This performance of “Run Nigger Run” is as Daphne Brooks would describe, an Afro-

Alienation act—an attempt to objectively view the ways in which black culture and black identity are taken and used to uplift the identity of white individuals in the United States. By using a former minstrel song, especially one with the word “Nigger” repeated throughout it,

Jenkins expresses his, “dissonant relationship to dominant culture,” as a black man in the United

States, “and plot[s] ways to subvert that dissonance.”166 Though uncomfortable and in many ways disturbing, these performances do not have the capability of creating the damage produced by the original appropriators. Instead Afro-Alienation acts invite audiences, particularly those of the dominant culture, to mildly experience the disconcerting position of being discriminated against without subjecting them to an inferior or dehumanizing status. This can create an enlightening and educational experience.167

Matthew Morrison’s Blacksounds also apply well here because it demonstrates the destructive nature of black musical misappropriations of the past and present. American music history and popular culture often fails to acknowledge the oppression that has defined black music. Blacksounds counters this paradigm and places black music and its various misappropriations within the context of chattel slavery and blackface minstrelsy. In this way,

Blacksounds are confrontational and the struggles associated with black culture are unavoidable.

Morrison writes, “we make sense out of sound(s) from our cultural experiences. But depending

165 Jenkins, interview. 166 Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, 6. 167 Similarly, the provocative nature of the Carolina Chocolate Drop’s album title, “Genuine Negro Jig,” would also be described as an Afro-Alienation act. The Chocolate Drops also displayed this when they performed the minstrel song, “Dixie,” for white audiences. Although they performed the song as an instrumental piece, they intended for audiences revel in the dissonance of seeing African Americans play the tune.

75 upon who is listening versus who is producing the sounds being interpreted—and the structures or conditions under which these sounds are exchanged—sound, like bodies, can be commodified and subjected.”168 The Carolina Chocolate Drops and other black string bands are well aware of the provocative imagery and sonic value of a contemporary black musicians playing the banjo or the fiddle. This act challenges our modern perceptions of race and defiantly places the music in the context of oppression and survival.

Jenkins and Flemons both expressed the power of holding the banjo in a white performance space. In my interview with the Jenkins, he reflected about his contributions and whether they were making an impact on America’s racial perceptions.

There are some days, I mean, Arkansas playing for 200 white people and I am like, am I doing it? I’ve had mixed experiences, you know. Where I played for all white audience’s people yell at me, all the craziness. Last year we played at a festival and I had a dude tell me, “I remember you playing in Boulder when Freddie Gray happened and you were so angry and I want you to know, I heard you. Like I’m an old white dude who used to vote Republican. I heard you.”169

These educational moments, in addition to empowering the black community, keep

Jenkins and others in the black roots music revival motivated. “I can do a gig in Oakland and black kids pick up a banjo because now we are remembering how important that is. We are in a constant culture war, connected to the knowledge of the black banjo… the banjo being a black instrument.”170 I wondered if this aim to empower the black community has led to changes in the racial demographics of string band music audiences or genres. “I’ve seen it a little bit,” Flemons explained to me in my interview with him.

I’ve seen people come up out of the woodwork that say they are influenced by our music. Mostly what our influence has been in the long run; you can look up black string band but compared to stained picture and very far away ancient stuff, even the recordings, you have to do some digging to find great recordings of different black string bands. [The

168 Matthew Morrison, “The Sound(s) of Subjection, 13-24. 169 Jenkins, interview. 170 Ibid.

Carolina Chocolate Drops] was able to make it easy and tangible to find black band and get introductory stuff to get you deeper into it if that’s your desire. That to me is where the main influence comes in. You can imagine a banjo player being black or being not just a white banjo player like when I started playing.171

He also felt that black audience members tended to resist his music but acknowledged the long and complicated history that contextualizes this resistance. While neither Flemons nor

Jenkins admitted to seeing a significant change in the demographics of string band music, they recognized the potential that their performances have on future black generations. From the beginning of Flemons career, black audience members occasionally approached him after the performances to say, “That’s white boys music. I can’t play that music, I can’t listen to that music, but when I saw you guys, I could embrace it because it was us.”172 Through his performances, he recognizes his contributions to empowering the black community and challenges the status quo.

This chapter describes the development and challenges of the current black roots music revival. More specifically, the movement I suggest is what Livingston refers to as an ethnic revival. This is demonstrated by black string band musicians use of their minority identity to contest the contemporary (and white) racial connotations of string band music. With the use of recordings, ethnographic fieldwork, and the mentorship of musicians who learned string band music through oral tradition, musicians today are capturing the sounds of the past and revitalizing them. The ideology that this revival is set in, and is in many ways based on, the goals of the Black Banjo Then and Now listserv and both black banjo gatherings. In efforts to create a community of black string band musicians and acknowledge those often overlooked in the past,

171 Flemons, interview. 172 Ibid.

77 black roots music revivalists will continue to empower black audiences and future generations of musicians.

As impactful as the Black Banjo Gatherings were to the revival, there have only been two in existence. According to organizers, no plans are present to create another reunion. The challenge of the gathering were to maintain a balance of performance activities and informative lectures. A similar event which occurs annually, known simply as The Banjo Gatherings, demonstrates this balance quite well; several of the participants of the black banjo gatherings regularly attend. The rhetoric of The Banjo Gatherings is very similar to the Black Banjo

Gatherings and strives to highlight the significant presence of black culture in banjo history. As the revival continues, The Banjo Gatherings are likely to replace The Black Banjo Gatherings as more black performers and scholars of the black banjo increase in attendance.

In Chapter 4, I present a survey that determines the perceptions of race and music in

America by assessing undergraduate students’ comprehension of American music history.

Although information about black string band music has been collected by researchers, the students show a significant lack of knowledge about black musical performance. This demonstrates the challenges of black string band music revivalists as they continue to challenge the racial attitudes of the United States.

CHAPTER IV

SURVEY AND ANALYSIS

In 2014, Alan Barron, a white 8th-grade history teacher in Monroe, Michigan, decided to show a video of a blackface minstrel performance to his class during a lesson about racial segregation and Jim Crow laws.173 Observing in the back of the classroom was the assistant principal who proceeded to interrupt Barron’s class and told him to stop playing the video. The next day, Barron was placed on administrative leave while the school district investigated whether his teaching methods on African-American history were inappropriate. A week later, a school district spokesman announced, “Mr. Barron has been on leave for about a week while we look into a reported situation in his classroom.”174 Whilst suspended, Barron, who was weeks away from retirement, was not allowed to attend any school district functions including the annual banquet honoring the teachers retiring that year.

The Monroe community was in an uproar over the suspension. A mother of one of the students was reported saying that her daughter, “was more offended that they stopped the video.”175 Another student started making and distributing #FREEMRBARRON t-shirts while someone created a Facebook event called “Reinstate Mr. Barron Immediately!”176 A comment on the Monroe News Facebook page noted, “There are over 100 comments on this subject... and

100% of the people[s’] comments are in favor of Mr. Barron! That's gotta say something! It's a

173 Ray Kisonas, “Monroe Teacher Suspended Over Black History Lesson,” Monroe News, May 30, 2014, accessed January 4th, 2018, http://www.monroenews.com/article/20140530/NEWS/305309914. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 Reinstate Mr. Barron Immediately! Facebook Event, June 2, 2014 to July 1, 2014 (3:00:00 p.m. ET), Facebook.com, accessed January 4, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/events/729611423767646/?active_tab=discussion.

79 sad day when a teacher can't teach history... and has to worry about ‘political correctness’. What has this world come to?”177

Figure 17: #FREEMRBARRON t-shirt created by angry student. 179

After two weeks, Barron was reinstated without any explanation from the school district.180 About seven months later, Monroe Public Schools released a written reprimand to the public which claimed Barron had a reputation for making racist comments and jokes to students throughout his career. According to The Detroit News, “[S]tudents told administrators Alan

Barron had joked about Mexicans being bullies who steal and he called blacks dumb.”181 Barron

177 Comment on Monroe News’ Facebook page, May, 30, 2014 (6:58 p.m.), accessed January 4, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/monroenews/posts/10152456292741692?comment_id=10152456961846692&comment _tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D. 179 Comment on Monroe News’ Facebook page, May, 30, 2014 (4:08 p.m.), accessed January 4, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/monroenews/posts/10152456292741692?comment_id=10152456961846692&comment _tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D. 180 Ray Kisonas, “Monroe teacher reinstated after segregation,” Monroe News, June 1, 2014, accessed January 4th, 2018, http://www.monroenews.com/news/2014/Jun/01/al-barron-reinstated-mps-teacher. 181 “Monroe School Says Teacher Made Racist Comments,” Detroit News, December 22, 2014, accessed January 4, 2018, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/12/22/monroe-school-teacher-racist- comments/20786151/.

80 denied all accusations and viewed the entire experience as a lesson for his students. In an interview Barron conducted with the Chicago Tribune after he was reinstated, the teacher stated,

“The best thing you can say about what happened to me is that it turned out to be a teaching moment for the kids… I always tell my students, ‘Be afraid of falling out of a third-floor window, but never be afraid about standing up for what you believe.”182 Later in the interview

Barron explained why he believed his teaching methods were valid and necessary. He expressed,

“Teaching history means sometimes you teach things that happened that were offensive. Racism is offensive, and the use of blackface was offensive…. It’s history. That’s what I do. I teach history”183

As this case study demonstrates, portions of American history are omitted from the classroom due to the angst of addressing systematic racism. Often, administrators and educators do not know the history themselves to implement the correct information necessary to discuss race. As established in the previous chapters, scholars have complied extensive research about

African American music history. However, the study conducted in this chapter suggests that this information is not being taught in the classroom. This raises many problems: (1) students are unable to recognize the contributions of African American musicians; (2) students view

American music as segregated; and (3) students associate blackface minstrel stereotypes with reality.

The presence of institutionalized racism can no longer dictate what information is being taught in the classroom. Therefore, this chapter presents the results of a survey that was distributed to students that assed their comprehension about American music from the nineteenth

182 John Kass, “ Teacher’s Lesson About Racism Offends His Bosses,” Chicago Tribune, June 5, 2014, accessed January 4, 2018, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-05/news/ct-kass-met-0605- 20140605_1_history-school-administrator-segregation. 183 Ibid.

81 and early twentieth centuries. Additionally, the results of this survey have the potential to create a dialogue about the lacuna which exists between American music scholarship and what information is taught in the classroom.

Method

The research involved an online 26-question survey consisting of both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The survey was designed and distributed through the use of Qualtrics, an online survey platform. Surveys were completed in large class setting and volunteer participants were informed that the survey was related to American music history. Qualitative analysis was conducted by the use of word clouds generated by Qualtrics. Word clouds illustrates greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the answers to open-ended questions which helps researchers to summarize the text data and provide meaningful interpretations.184 Quantitative analysis was applied to the multiple-choice answers and are represented in tables and bar graphs. Questions in the survey were grouped into four categories that were designed to gather demographic information, to assess the participants’ knowledge of nineteenth to early twentieth century American music history, to require participants to listen, and describe four American children’s songs that were originally composed as blackface minstrel songs and to measure each participants’ understanding of blackface minstrelsy. The survey questions were ordered as follows: Demographic Information; American Music History; Audio

Clip Recognition; and Blackface Minstrelsy.

184 Word Clouds, or tag clouds, are utilized for qualitative research in the field of education. They are particularly helpful to assess large quantities of written responses to open-ended questions. See also, Bill J. Brooks, Debra M. Gilbuena, Sephen J. Krause, and Milo D. Koretsky, “Using Word Clouds for Fast Formative Assessment of Students’ Short Written Responses,” Chemical Engineering Education 48, no. 4 (Fall 2014); and Carmel McNaught and Paul Lam, “Using Wordle as a Supplementary Research Tool,” The Qualitative Report 15, no. 3 (May 2010).

Results

Demographic Information

Participation included 148 volunteered undergraduate students enrolled in music history and world music courses at Kent State University. Ages ranged from 17 to 26 years old and additionally included one 33-year-old outlier. 95 females and 53 males participated in the study, which makes the sex ratio approximately 16 to 9. The racial demographics of the survey consisted of 118 people who identified as White, 27 as Black or African American, 5 as Asian, 2 as American Indian or Alaska Native, and 6 as Other. 28 music majors participated in the survey including 14 majoring in music education. The majors represented by the rest of the survey population varied significantly.

Racial Demographics of Participants

Figure 18: Graph illustrating the racial demographics of participants.

Participants were required to describe one’s own experience in musical performance.

125 identified themselves as having musical experience, while 23 participants suggested that they had none. The degree of musical experience varied—some expressed they once made music in the past such as playing an instrument ins school band or singing as children. Others suggested they continue to perform today either in university, church or for recreational purposes. Not many students expressed having performance experience in string band music genres with the exception of one white male music major who wrote that he had played the banjo for two years.

Musical Experience of Participants 140

125 120

100

23 20

0 Musical Experience No Musical Experience

Figure 19: Graph illustrating the participant musical experience.

Not all 148 participants answered every question in the survey, therefore some answers have less than 148 responses. I assume this is because participants skipped the questions they did know how to answer. It is also important to bear in mind that some participants lost interest in answering the questions accurately as they progressed through the survey. The result of this behavior led to inconsistencies in the surveys of certain participants. When asked, “Describe the music African Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th Centuries,” one student responded,

The first Africans transported to this country came from a variety of ethnic groups with a long history of distinct and cultivated musical traditions. Some were able to bring musical instruments with them or build new ones in this country. The "banja" or "banshaw," now known as the banjo, was one of the African instruments that continued to be built and played in America.

As this response indicates, this participant showcased a clear understanding of African diasporic music during this time-period as well as provided specific information about the history of the banjo. Nevertheless, when asked “Do you know where the banjo is originally from?” the same participant answered “No.” Despite these discrepancies, an overall analysis can still be made with the information gathered in this study. Future surveys can provide a better assessment about undergraduates’ understanding about African American music and the American history canon.

American Music History

The main objective of this section was to determine the participants’ comprehension of

American music between the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. I intentionally selected this broad time frame to encourage participants to elaborate on the various music genres and musicians they were familiar with and confident writing about. One hypothesis I held was that participants would display more of an understanding about European American music history than that of African Americans. I also predicted that participants would associated certain

American music genres with particular racial demographics (e.g. African Americans perform the blues or European Americans perform country music).

Building on this logic, I required participants to describe to the best of their abilities the music European Americans were making in the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. In all,

125 participants answered the question. Most of the music majors in the study elaborated on their descriptions and provided multiple sentences to define the large time frame posed in the question, while most of the non-music majors in contrast provided short-phrases and one-word answers. This was nothing less than my expectations because I assumed the music majors had a familiarity with American music history through the required music courses for their degrees.

The music majors also wrote responses providing specific composers, musical styles, melodic structures and historical eras. Words such as “romantic,” “expressionism,” “minimalism,” “neo classical,” “serialism” and, “microtonality,” were frequently used in their answers. One music major wrote,

19th Century: The composers were no longer "slaves" to patrons. Dissonance and rubato were popular in music. Music based on emotion and inner experience Composers like Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin. 20th Century: Fast paced changes including electronic music, mixed meter, polyrhythm, ect. Impressionism, nationalism, chance music, and minimalism were big movements. Composers like Cage, Copland, and Debussy.

Other answers were not as specific as this particular response. Both music and non-music majors used the general term classical to describe American Western art music, however, non- music majors happened to use this term more frequently. Below, Figure 4 is a word cloud of the most frequent words generated by the music major’s responses and Figure 5 is a word cloud of the language used by the non-music majors.

Figure 20: Word clouds of music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music European Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Figure 21: Word clouds of non-music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music European Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

While the nineteenth and early twentieth century popular music scene was dominated by blackface minstrel song in the United States, not one response referred to minstrel or coon songs.

This suggests that the participants did not associate the popularity of blackface minstrelsy musical performance to this era in American music history. This raises some important questions about educating students about blackface minstrelsy, particularly the music majors. Perhaps, one could argue that the music major curriculum often emphasizes classically trained musicians in

Western art music as opposed to those in popular and traditional music genres. However, many of responses provided by the music majors in this survey specifically used the words popular and folk. In fact, 9 of the 26 music major responses included the word folk and 5 responses used the word popular. For example, one student wrote, “European Americans were making instrumental music, ‘pop’ tunes, and playing folk songs written by their ancestors.” While this response refers to pop music in a general way, one cannot overtly assume this participant was referring to blackface minstrel song.

Another question posed in the survey asked participants to describe the music African

Americans were making in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 128 responses were received. As illustrated in Figures 6 and 7, the word cloud generated by the music major’s responses is nearly identical that of the non-music majors. However, the non-music majors utilized the word “instrument” more frequently than the music majors. In fact, only one music major used the word “instrument” to describe African American music making. This response read, “A lot of the music African Americans were making in the nineteenth century was spiritual/gospel music, sometimes specifically in the south due to slavery. When we hit the 20th century we begin to see more African Americans in instrumental music and begin the roots of ragtime and jazz.” This response reveals the American music history canon often taught to music

88 majors—one which lacks the acknowledgement of African American instrumental performance prior to the twentieth century.

Figure 22: Word clouds of music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music African Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Figure 23: Word clouds of non-music majors’ responses to the question “Describe the music African Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

The survey requested participants to identify where the American banjo is originally from. The purpose of this question was to assess if the vast scholarship on banjo organology has become common knowledge. Out of 144 participants who answered the question, “Do you know where the banjo is originally from? If yes, where?” 119 answered no and 25 answered yes. Of the 25 participants who answered yes, 15 wrote responses indicating that banjo was from Africa by including locations such as “West Africa” and “Sub-Saharan Africa.” The only response to point to a location outside of the United States and Africa was one that read, “India.” Some answers indicated vague geographical locations presumably in the United States such as, “the south,” “the west” or “country area,” while others were more specific and referred to states and regions such as, Louisiana,” “Kentucky” or “American Appalachian.” One participant wrote,

“African Americans in America” and thereby located the banjo’s origins in America, as well as associated the instrument to a specific race and music genre. Figure 8 illustrates the responses of the participants who answered yes to the question.

Question: Do you know where is the original location of the banjo? If yes, where?

Responses of The South African Participants Who Africa (Including Specific The West The Country India Americans in Answered Yes States and Regions) America (Jazz) Totals (Out of 24* 15 4 2 1 1 1 Reponses)

Table 1: Participant responses when asked where the banjo is originally from.*Although 25 participants answered yes to the question, only 24 provided written responses to the answer.

Regarding the same question, 23 music majors claimed to not know where the banjo was originally from, while 4 answered yes. Of the 4 who claimed to know the banjo’s origin, only 3 knew that the banjo was from Africa and the other answered “the South.” Therefore,

90 approximately 13% of the music majors in the study have been correctly introduced to the history of the banjo.

Music Major Responses to, “Do you know where the banjo is originally from?

Figure 24: Music Major responses when asked where the banjo is originally from.

Participants were asked which racial demographic they associated with country music genres (e.g. bluegrass, old-time music, folk). I correctly predicted that participants would refer to the white or Caucasian race. As illustrated in the Figure 10, the most frequently written words for the responses to this question included, “white,” “music,” “country,” and “people.” Notably, one participant wrote, “Southern and Appalachian white people. I think I'm getting this information from my own recollection of popular country singers and award shows. Also, there was a lot of country music played a Trump rallies, which were attended mostly by white people.” Another participant expressed a similar sentiment by writing, “White people. Because I’ve never

91 personally heard a black person play it. Also [the] majority of people who I hear with country music is white.”

Figure 25: Word cloud to the question “What racial demographic do you associate with country music genres (e.g. bluegrass, old-time music, folk)? Why?”

It should be noted that a handful of students refused to assign one particular race to country music genres. One music major expressed that he did not associate country music to one race and went on to acknowledge country music’s creolized history. He wrote, “There are many demographics I associate with these genres because these genres were developed from many different areas. Much of it was developed from slave music and expanded from there.” On the other hand, a different participant who also negated the question, used the commercial success of

Darius Rucker, an African American country music artist and former lead singer to the band

Hootie and the Blowfish, to exemplify the flourishing diversity in the country music identity.

This student wrote, “I’d say all. Darius is a good example. [I’ve] been to country music concerts and Asian to black to white were all there. Maybe just an American thing.” This response

92 showcases an appreciation for America’s diversity, yet manages to subject Darius Rucker to a token representation of African American presence in country music. In all actuality, the musician is merely the third African-American artist to be given a membership to the Grand Ole

Opry, which has a history of exclusively giving the honor to white artists.185

Darius Rucker made several more appearances in the survey. When participants were asked to name an African American musician who contributed to early country music history, the names Darius and Rucker were the two most frequently written words generated in the word cloud (Figure 11). Other responses included the names of Louis Armstrong, Deford Bailey,

Robert Johnson, and Chuck Berry—Deford Bailey being the only musician of the five who is inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame.186 Similarly, when asked to name an African

American who plays the fiddle or banjo today, Rucker’s name appeared to be the largest word in the word cloud again. Oddly enough, the instrument Rucker plays neither the banjo nor the fiddle, as he is known for playing the guitar (Figure 12).

185 Joe Bargmann, “Will Darius Rucker Break Country Music’s Color Barrier Once and for All?” Dallas Observer, July 5, 2016, accessed April 1, 2018, http://www.dallasobserver.com/music/will-darius-rucker-break- country-music-s-color-barrier-once-and-for-all-8445362. 186 Ibid.

Figure 26: Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question “Name an African American musician who contributed to early country music history.”

Figure 27: Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question “Name an African American musician who plays the fiddle or banjo today.”

Participants were asked if they knew the meaning of the term race record. Participants who answered yes were requested to provide a definition. This question was designed to determine if the participants were aware that race records were used as a marketing tool in the

American recording industry as a form of institutionalized racial segregation. Further, I was interested if participants could recognize how systematic racism has affected the modern-day

American perceptions about racial identity and music genres. Of the 147 who answered the question, 14 wrote yes and 133 wrote no. From the 14 that expressed yes, only 13 provided written definitions. Many of the answers projected a positive connotation on the term and reflected how race records benefited African American musicians.

For example, one participant wrote, “It integrated the people giving rise to African

American music,” while another wrote, “Race records affected American music because it brought in the styles from African Americans into a mainly Caucasian nation. The records created diversity in America and opened up the eyes of many.” The participants use of the words

“integrate” and “diversity” to describe race records as it benefits the white population of

American society and thereby denied the oppression which African Americans were forced to endure in order to provide such pleasures.

Interestingly, none of the responses associated race records with country music genres, nor with the racial slur “hillbilly,” which was used as a label by record companies to sell to poorer white populations. Instead, participants related race records with the genres often associated with African American music making, such as the blues, jazz or even rock and roll.

Further, no responses connected race records to African American string band musicians, who were often denied acknowledgement for playing on early country music genre albums.

Figure 28: Word cloud of all participants’ responses to the question “Do you know what a race record is? If yes, how did race records affect American music?”

Audio Clip Recognition

Four audio clips were selected from American children’s song repertoire that were originally composed as blackface minstrel songs, including “Oh! Susanna,” “Shoo Fly Don’t

Bother Me,” “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Camptown Races.”187 The selection of each song was based on my understanding that many Americans have a familiarity with these particular melodies.188 The instruction for this section read, “Listen to the following excerpts. Write what you know about each of these songs.” Less than 30 seconds were played of each audio clip. I did

187 Unbeknownst to the participants, the Stephen Foster tunes, “Oh! Susanna” and “Camptown Races” were audio clips of the twentieth century blackface performer, Al Jolson performing as E. P. Christy in the 1939 movie Swanee River. “Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me” was a recording of Pete Seeger from the album titled American Folk Game & Activity Songs for Children. “Turkey in the Straw” was an audio clip of the single sung by Grant Raymond Barrett. 188 All three songs are often referred to today as American folk songs or children’s songs and are played in old-time music repertoire.

96 not expect participants to know the blackface minstrel origins of these the audio clips and discovered that no participant expressed knowledge that these songs were performed in blackface.189 I assumed instead that participants would associate the melodies and lyrics with children’s songs or American folk tunes they learned in childhood. The music genres that reoccurred in this section’s responses included children’s songs, folk songs, and country songs.

The music major responses tended to reflect an aural analysis of the music, although the instructions did not indicate they were required to do so. For example, one response for “Shoo

Fly Don’t Bother Me” read, “This is the emergence of using the voice as an instrument, which can be heard in the beginning of this clip. Although it sounds nonsensical, it does have a lyrical quality to it that makes it seem like an instrument such as a fiddle or banjo playing. This is an example of acapella (without other instruments.” Another used a tempo marking and a description of vocal timber to identify the tune when writing, “Allegro, very cheerful, slightly raspy.”

Oh! Susanna

From the 125 responses, 17 recognized this song as a children’s song or having learned the song as a child. 12 participants recognized the title of the tune. 82 of the responses defined

“Oh! Susanna” as either an American folk song or an old country song. Others associated it to older cartoons and movies. No responses identified the composer as Stephen Foster, nor did any allude to the blackface minstrel origins of the song. One response for this audio clip identified the song as being written by a slave. This participant wrote, “It was written by an African

American during the years of slavery and is generally used today as a children’s folk tune.”

189 Every audio clip obtained at least one response that suggested the song was originally written by an African American or slave.

Stephen Foster was praised for writing minstrel melodies that some, including sociologist W.E.B

Du Bois, felt embodied the African American melodic aesthetic.190 Regardless if of Foster’s intent for composing, students did not seem to know him as the composer, nor did they recognize this as a minstrel tune.

Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me

113 participants wrote responses to this audio clip and 10 recognized the title of the song.

30 answers suggested that the song was associated with American folk or country music and 39 considered it a children’s song. One participant expressed learning this song from her grandfather as a child, which reflects the harmless character “Shoo Fly Don’t’ Bother” now assumes. This participant wrote “I feel like [I] remember my grandparents singing this for me when I was little. A fun little song to sing as a kid.” Similar to the one response written for the first audio clip, one participant assumed the song was written by and African American. This participant wrote, “It sounds like an African spiritual.”

Turkey in the Straw

114 participants responded to audio clip including 41 responses classifying the song as country or folk music. 21 participants considered the tune a children’s song and 13 identified the title as either “Do Your Ears Hang Low” or “Turkey in the Straw.” One surveyor associated the melody with the Ying Yang Twins song, “Do Your Chain Hang Low.” Seven participants recognized the melody as the song played by ice cream trucks. One participant associated it with the tune Mickey Mouse whistled in the first Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie. The melody for

“Turkey in the Straw,” was originally composed as the theme song for a blackface minstrel

190 Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 16-17.

98 character named Zip Coon in the 1830s. As the data suggests, today the melody has many variant titles and lyrics.

Camptown Races

The last audio clip received 124 responses including 32 that identified the tune as a children’s song. 10 participants indicated that they knew the title and 39 answers indicated the song was either a folk or country song. 14 participants revealed they associated the song with a campfire or singing at a sleep-away camp. One participant identified the composer as Stephen

Foster. Often Foster’s minstrel songs are played in the context of children’s song in media such as CD’s or children’s television programming. One response noted, “I think I learned this song off of a Disney sing-a-long VCR tape in my childhood. I definitely have it memorized and remember singing and listening to it before.” Another participant addressed the catchiness and pleasant aesthetic of the melody. He wrote, “This seems like the popularized form of music that appeals to the masses with its cheeriness and complexity. It can also be perceived as a previously common form of country music without listening to contemporary artists.” Inadvertently, this response identifies why blackface minstrel melodies were recontextualized in other music genres and how they have managed to survive into the contemporary.

Blackface Minstrelsy

There are several reasons why I highlight blackface minstrel performance in this study:

(1) its instrumentation and repertoire directly influence string band music genres today; (2) it is an underrepresented entertainment in the American history canon, despite its worldwide popularity throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and (3) the information taught about the topic is often misconstrued and misleading. This section began with the yes-or-no

99 multiple-choice question, “Do you know what blackface minstrelsy is?” If participants answered no, the survey ended and if they answered yes, participants were forwarded to more questions on the topic. This section was intended to assess what participants knew about blackface minstrelsy, and how they were introduced to the information. I wanted to determine if the minstrel entertainment industry was taught to participants in a classroom setting, through media or perhaps through conversations with family and friends. Particularly, I was interested as to how this topic was addressed in the classroom and if the context determined the individual’s understanding of the performance practices’ historical significance.

The results proved that of 147 participants who answered the question, 41 responded yes and 106 responded no.191 Of the 41 participants who answered yes, 36 wrote descriptions explaining how they learned about blackface minstrelsy. 25 of the 36 descriptions suggested that participants learned about the topic in a school classroom setting. As Figure 9 demonstrates below, History was the school subject that most participants leaned about blackface. Other school subjects mentioned in the responses included Theatre, Music, Journalism, and Choir.

Seven of the 25 responses broadly alluded to learning about the topic in school without indicating which particular discipline.

191 The only participant to express having musical experience playing the banjo expressed that he did not know what blackface minstrelsy was. Minstrel songs are played extensively throughout in banjo repertoire. This possibly indicates the blackface origins of banjo tunes have become reinterpreted or forgotten.

100

Non-Specified School Subject History Theatre Music Journalism Choir School Subject

Totals (Out of 25* 8 7 4 3 1 1 Responses)

Table 2: School subjects that participants learned about blackface minstrelsy. *Although 36 participants responded to the question, only 25 responses suggested that they learned blackface in a school setting.

Eleven of the 36 responses suggested participants learned about blackface minstrelsy through other means. Some wrote they learned about the performance through conversations with family or friends. One participant wrote, “I learned about blackface minstrelsy in about middle school because my friends and I talk about important issues that we're passionate about. I think one of my friend’s mom was telling her about how it was wrong or she saw it on a video and she told us all about it. I was around 13.” Another participant wrote, “Around 19 when I learned. My friend was talking about racism in the Olden days and it came up.” Others alluded to learning about the topic through the news. “I learned about blackface minstrelsy when I was around 14 years old from hearing about celebrities or people in the news in modern day wearing blackface.” Overall, those exposed to blackface minstrelsy outside of the classroom expressed it was through either old films, cartoons, the news, social media, and verbal conversation.

The latter half of the question requested that participants provide the age at which they learned about blackface minstrelsy. Out of 32 responses, 24 provided a specific age, while 8 referred to the educational stage the participant was in—e.g. middle school, high school or college. The majority of responses indicate that most participants learned about blackface minstrelsy between the ages 11 and 22. Five years old was the youngest age referred to. The participant who wrote this expressed, “My parents would watch old films that had blackface minstrelsy as an unironic part of the story. They were those kinds of films with weak plotlines, idealistic dialogue, and a lot of dance numbers. Probably from the 1940s or 50s. I also saw

101 people talk about blackface on news-like programs, as a sort of history lesson. I must have known that blackface was not cool by age 5.” This response points to various forms of media in which a young child could be exposed to this aspect of American culture outside of school.

≤ 10 11-14 15-18 19-22 Age (before middle school) (middle school) (high school) (college) Totals (Out of 24* 2 10 11 9 Responses)

Table 3: Age of participants when they learned about blackface minstrelsy. *Although 36 participants responded to the question, only 24 responses specified an age.

Of the African American participant responses, 10 claimed to know what blackface minstrelsy was and 17 claimed to not know. Therefore, 63% of the African Americans in the study were unaware that the black stereotypes they have encountered in their lives were systematically fabricated through an entertainment industry. This suggests that unbeknownst to black individuals, one’s self identity has been directly affected by fictional minstrel stereotypes.

The next question of the survey asked for participants to identify when blackface minstrelsy was performed in the United States, which resulted in 32 responses. Most participants associated blackface with the nineteenth century with very few exceptions which indicated its survival in the twentieth century. One participant suggested, “I can’t remember the exact dates, but I know it continued well into the 20th century.” Another wrote, “Early to middle 1900s.

Probably through the 1950s.” While these responses are not incorrect, blatant performances of staged blackface entertainment was widely practiced by local troupes well into the 1960s.

Participants were requested to name one blackface minstrel composer. When constructing the survey, I assumed the majority of participants would recognize the two Stephen Foster melodies, “Oh! Susanna” and “Camptown Races,” in the Audio Clip Recognition section.

Therefore, I was curious if participants would associate the composer with minstrel song

102 repertoire.192 Three responses were collected for this question, none of which were provided by music majors. Two participants wrote the name, Joel Sweeney, a prominent minstrel composer and one of the first documented white banjoists. The other name was James Bland, known as

James A. Bland, who was an African American minstrel composer and performer and whose music has frequently been mistaken for Stephen Foster songs. A follow-up question asked participants to name one blackface performer, which resulted in four responses. James A. Bland was referred to again, this time by a different participant. Additionally, one participant wrote the name of the prominent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, which needless to say is an inaccurate guess.193

African American blackface minstrel composers and performers are often removed from the American history canon, despite the significant role they play in the foundation of American entertainment. Participants were required to answer one yes-or-no question asking, “Did you know that African Americans performed in blackface minstrelsy?” Out of 40 responses to the question, 13 answered yes and 27 answered no. Of those who responded yes, 3 participants were music majors and 2 participants were African Americans. Below, Figure 11 illustrates the results of this question in the form of a graph.

192 Stephen Foster once wrote in a letter that he aspired to become the, “best Ethiopian song writer. The term “Ethiopian” was often used in the blackface minstrel industry, particularly in the earlier decades of the practice, as a marketing tool to proclaim genuine African diasporic characteristics. For example, the full title of one of Foster’s classics is “Old Folks at Home: Ethiopian Melody.” The composer declared to be the best minstrel song writer in a letter addressed to E.P. Christy, founder of the successful blackface minstrel troupe, Christy’s Minstrels. See also, Lott, Love and Theft, 269. 193 Frederick Douglass was not a blackface minstrel performer but was indeed a supporter of African American blackface minstrel performance. In an article he wrote in 1848 for an abolitionist newspaper called The North Star Douglass advocating for African American entertainment success. He wrote, “It is something gained when the colored man in any form can appear before a white audience; and we think that even this company, with industry, application, and proper cultivation of their taste, may yet be instrumental in removing the prejudice against our race.” See also, Lott, Love and Theft, 15.

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Participants responses to, “Did you know African Americans performed in blackface minstrelsy?”

Figure 29: Participant responses when asked if they knew African Americans performed blackface minstrelsy.

The last question of the survey asked participants “Do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society? If yes, how?” I wanted to assess the participants’ understanding of the harmful impact blackface minstrelsy has had on the contemporary perceptions of black identity. Out of the 39 who responded to the question, 33 answered yes and 6 answered no.194

One participant expressed, “The past always affects the present. This kind of minstrelsy was fairly offensive and therefore was probably a contributing factor in the need/desire for the

African Americans to have their own style of music that was specific to just them.” Another wrote, “Blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society because there are certain stigmas that

194 6 African American participants expressed that blackface has impacted today’s society and 2 disagreed.

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African American people have because they were made to look like morons.” Figure 11 illustrates this outcome as a bar graph and Figure 12 demonstrates the word cloud that was generated from the responses.

Responses to, “Do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society?”

Figure 30: Responses to “Do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society? If yes, how?

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Figure 13: Word cloud generated the responses to the question “How do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society?

Analysis

The results of this survey suggest that the typical undergraduate student between the ages

17 and 26 comprehends American music history through the lens of the Eurocentric narrative.

More specifically, this survey showcases the common miscomprehensions of music majors and music education majors. I propose that music educators develop methods to counter these inaccuracies in the future, such as applying Matthew Morrison’s theory of Blacksounds in the classroom. Blacksounds is a perspective one can view American music history and places the oppressive treatment of African Americans at the center of its scope. If educators applied

Blacksounds to American music history lessons, students would have a higher potential to better understand the complex relationship between white supremacy and African American culture in the past and present.

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The outdated American music history paradigm glorifies European American achievement as it simultaneously suppresses African American contributions and oppression.

While this study exclusively focuses on African American music and identity, the same can be said for all marginalized groups in American society. The distortion of history not only disconnects us from understanding who we were in the past, but also discombobulates us from knowing who we are in the present. Therefore, African American history is not a fragment to be intermittently highlighted within a European American storyline, but a contemporaneous presence which exists in the same time and space.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND OTHER REMARKS

In late September of 2017 on a Tuesday afternoon, Rhiannon Giddens delivered the keynote speech at the International Bluegrass Music Association Business Conference. She began by describing the oddity of being a female, mixed-race African American banjo player in a music genre that she once believed was historically and culturally exclusive to people of

European American descent. She said to the audience, “So more and more of late, the question has been asked: How do we get more diversity in bluegrass?”195 Leaning in closer to the microphone, Giddens held her hand to her cheek as though about to whisper, “Which of course, behind the hand, is really, why is bluegrass so white?”196 As soft chuckles ensued amongst the audience members, she followed her questions with, “Before we can look to the future, we need to understand the past.”197

In this critical statement, Giddens invites us to confront the representation of black music in American popular culture. She challenges us to ask why black string band history has been omitted from the American music canon and how this has impacted our perceptions of black culture today. About a month after she delivered her speech, Giddens was awarded the

MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and $625,000 for, “reclaiming African-American

195 “Rhiannon Giddens’ Keynote Address – IBMA Business Conference 2017 – Video and Text.” International Bluegrass Music Association, accessed November 1, 2017, https://ibma.org. 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid.

108 contributions to folk and country music and bringing to light new connections between music from the past and the present.”198

Much like Giddens, my personal racial attitudes toward string band music performance was largely based on experiences I had encountered with white supremacy in my youth, coupled with the portrayal of exclusively white string band musicians in American popular media. This study has revealed that these attitudes are not original to me; in fact, several of my interlocutors expressed similar reservations towards string band performance before they learned about the

African heritage of the banjo. Therefore, in addition to investigating the revival of black roots music traditions, this ethnomusicological study addressed the issues of race brought up by

Giddens by confronting the presence of white supremacy as it exists in American music historiography, the entertainment and recording industry, and contemporary performance spaces.

Additionally, the results of this investigation revealed that modifications in music education that stress the significance of cultural collaborations and racial oppression have the potential to change the future perceptions of race and music in the United States.

In the second chapter, I provided a literature review that chronicled a brief history of black banjo and fiddle playing in the United States. Future research in the history of the banjo and fiddle include ethnographic work, particularly in Senegal and Gambia, to discover the ways in which West African folk lute traditions were transported to the United States. Additionally, within the contents of this chapter I discuss the impact of blackface minstrelsy on American popular culture and contextualize the role of African American minstrels in the development of the American entertainment industry.

198 “Rhiannon Giddens: Singer, Instrumentalist, and Songwriter.” MacArthur Foundation, accessed November 1, 2017, https//www.macfound.org.

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The theory of Afro-Alienation acts was applied throughout this work to demonstrates the ways in which black performers navigate white performance spaces historically and contemporarily. As Brooks suggests with her original application of the theory, African

American minstrels were subjected to navigate white performance spaces with entertainment material that was created to dehumanize them. In many ways these actions correlate with the experiences of black string band musicians today. As an attempt to deemphasize the spectacle and exoticism of blackness, both the African American blackface minstrel and the African

American string band musician use the destructive power of minstrel songs to claim the rights to cultural expression and declare ownership of one’s own black identity. In regard to blackface minstrel research today, more specifically African American blackface performance, much work must be accomplished in both archival research and ethnographic fieldwork.

Within the third chapter, I defined the black roots music revival as a cultural and musical initiative catalyzed by the Black Banjo Gatherings of 2005 and 2010. I suggested that the initiative, which was championed by past and present members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, enabled the construction of a cultural and racial discourse that is geared towards empowering the black community and acknowledging black culture’s presence within American music history.

My investigations revealed that there is room for more fieldwork in this area, particularly in analyzing string band music festivals and concerts in regard to the treatment of black string band performers in white spaces. Additionally, interviews with more revivalists not only document this movement, but also give us insight into the musicians’ personal motivations and goals.

The survey illustrated in the fourth chapter was conducted to assess undergraduate students’ understanding of American music history and their perceptions of music and racial identity. The results of the survey suggested that participants understood American music history

110 through the scope of Eurocentric narratives. Additionally, music majors (including music education majors) displayed a general lack of knowledge about black string band music performance and how it has influenced contemporary popular music. The latter half of the survey addressed blackface minstrelsy and showed that few students displayed an understanding of the topic and its impact on today’s society. I suggested that Matthew Morrison’s theory of

Blacksounds, which places chattel slavery and blackface minstrelsy at the center of the American music history, has the potential to remedy the pervading Eurocentric narrative of American music education.

Several limitations became apparent as a result of this survey. If conducted again, I suggest researchers use different settings and demographics (e.g. different regions of the United

States, off college campuses and within the public sphere). Additional questions that are also worth exploring include asking where participants are from and asking what music they enjoy listening to. These inquiries have the potential to allow researchers to compare the interpretations of participants from varying locations and different musical interests.

The growth of the black roots music revival is likely to continue in annual education and performance experiences such as The Banjo Gathering. Further, as musicians gain more visibility amongst wider audiences and move beyond the realms of string band music performance, the revival has much potential to flourish. For example, Giddens is currently writing a theatrical music performance about the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 with the benefits from her

Macarthur grant. The production captures the murder and exile of the once thriving African

American population and political leadership in Wilmington, North Carolina, carried out by a mob of heavily armed white citizens. Additionally, Dom Flemons released a Western music album in March 2018, which celebrates the songs of black cowboys and focuses on the African

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American contributions to the development of Western American culture. Hubby Jenkins expressed an interest in writing a Gospel music album that showcases the complex history of

African American spirituality. Although the revival began with the music of the banjo and the string band, its legacy lives within various forms of musical productions that acknowledge and celebrate black roots.

The performance spaces Justin Robinson encountered as an African American string band musician disallowed him from being equal with his white audience members and place him in the position of serving white supremacists’ methods of empowerment. The disheartening stories of his encounters with audiences in these spaces typifies an ongoing struggle of many

African Americans. Taking these occurrences into account and moving beyond the realms of music scholarship, this study points to issues of race in American society. It is with hope that this study will help build the foundation to produce further analysis of systemic racism and bigotry against minorities in the United States.

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APPENDIX

SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. What is your gender?

2. Choose one or more races that you consider yourself to be:

3. What is your age?

4. What is your major?

5. Do you have any experience singing or playing an instrument? Please explain your musical background.

6. Describe the music African Americans were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries:

7. Describe the music European were making in the 19th and early 20th centuries:

8. Do you know where the banjo is originally from? If yes, where?

9. What racial demographic do you associate with country music genres (e.g. bluegrass, old- time, folk)? Why?

10. Do you know what a race record is? If yes, how did race records affect American music?

11. Name a European American musician who contributed to early country music history:

12. Name a European American musician who plays the fiddle of banjo today:

13. Name an African American musician who contributed to early country music history:

14. Name an African American musician who paly the fiddle or banjo today:

15. Listen to the following excerpt. Write what you know about the song. (Participants listened to a 28 second audio clip of “Oh! Susanna”).

16. Listen to the following excerpt. Write what you know about the song. (Participants listened to a 25 second audio clip of “Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me”).

17. Listen to the following excerpt. Write what you know about the song. (Participants listened to a 20 second audio clip of “Turkey in the Straw”).

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18. Listen to the following excerpts. Write what you know about the song. (Participants listened to a 21 second audio clip of “Camptown Races”).

19. Do you know what blackface minstrelsy is?

20. How did you learn about blackface minstrelsy and what age were you?

21. When was blackface minstrelsy performed in the United States?

22. Name a blackface minstrel songwriter:

23. Name a blackface minstrel performer:

24. Did you know African-Americans performed in blackface minstrelsy?

25. Do you think that blackface minstrelsy has impacted today’s society? If yes, how?

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Interviews and Correspondence

Brian Farrow. Interview by author. September 23, 2018. Cecelia Conway. Interview by author. Cincinnati. April 6, 2018. Christopher Lornell. Interview by author. March 15, 2018. Dom Flemons. Interview by author. March 6, 2018. Greg Allen. “The Banjo’s Roots, Reconsidered,” NPR. August 23, 2011. Accessed April 2, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139880625/the-banjos-roots-reconsidered. Hubert Jenkins. Interview by author. March 5, 2018.

Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika. Hosts. “The Song” Uncivil (MP3 podcast). Gimlet Media. November 15, 2017. Accessed June 8, 2018. http://www.gimletmedia.com/uncivil/the- song#episode-player. Rhiannon Giddens. Interview by Kronos Quartet. “Rhiannon Giddens – Kronos’ Fifty for the Future Composer Interview” (video). November 22, 2017. Accessed June 1, 2018. http://kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future/composers-detail/rhiannon-giddens#score.

Terry Gross. “Carolina Chocolate Drops: Tradition From Jug to Kazoo.” NPR. November 22, 2017. Accessed June 1, 2018. http://kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future/composers- detail/rhiannon-giddens#score.