© Michael J. Kramer
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Subject to removal if lecture attendance declines. The Powerful Problems of Blackface Minstrelsy The racial masquerade across the color line
Racist… …but why, how, on what terms?
History: Theory: music and identity transgression - appropriation - identification music business emerging national popular music market streams of folklore/vernacular <-> commercial music peripheries and centers - urban/rural, black/white, rich/poor Theoretically: an apparatus for thinking about the power of transgression appropriation rebellion condescension affiliation “mutualities born of difference” - WT Lhamon “what is socially peripheral is often symbolically central.” -Barbara Babcock, anthropologist A Weird History: What was “Jim Crow”?
1890s - 1960s: system of racialized, often violent segregation, oppression 1820s-30s
“Jim Crow” - Thomas Dartmouth (TD) Rice, b. 1808 d. 1860 “Zip Coon” - GW Dixon b. 1801?-1861 History of Blackface Minstrelsy
The mask: ! the politics of transgression ! authenticity or hidden messages? Racist imaginings of the American South? Cakewalk: African-American parody of elite Southern whites - > white imitations of perceived African-American culture Many interpretations of the minstrel show Emerging white urban north working class
Fantastical projections onto blackness
Little actual knowledge of African-American culture Really about creating boundaries of “whiteness” - Alexander Saxton
The issue of *inauthenticity* But also… Deep history of masquerade, carnival, transgression in Europe peasant culture
-Dale Cockrell -William Mahar Dancing for Eels at Catherine Market, 1820 A “motley culture” of the emerging urban lumpenproletariat Black - white market interactions -> theater interactions emergent anti-elite, democratic popular culture grounded in “lore” forged across the color line
-WT Lhamon negotiations of power, freedom in/through/against market culture
1840s
1843, Virginia Minstrels, Chatham Theatre where where they from? 1843, Virginia Minstrels, Bowery Theatre “Old Dan Tucker,” recreated by Sandy River Minstrels Concept of the band: Tambo - Interlocuters - Bones Not just transgressions (crossing the color line using the racial mask)
But also circulations, the ironies of a song’s travels, its “wheelings about” these are “lore cycles” - Lhamon full of ironies and weirdness Dan Emmett, Ohio mixed race communities -> NYC b. 1815 d. 1904 “Dixie”
Written by Dan Emmett, 1850s? Becomes national anthem of the Confederacy
Union versions too | One of Lincoln’s favorite songs Emmett got it from?
>> Chorus from older Scottish melody?
“Wild Goose Nation” (1844) - >> urban fantasies about Western frontier?
>> Snowden Family of Ohio? African-American!
1860s
Absorption of minstrelsy into “respectability”
1890s “Coon song” fad
Hardening of racial satire, separation, but also
Appropriation of the appropriation or, two can play the transgression game.
Bert Williams b. 1874 d. 1922 Bahamian/NYC performer
African-American appropriations of whites imitating blacks imitating whites… “hidden transcripts” - James Scott Al Jolson, The Jazz Singer (1927) The blackface mask as meditation on pain of Jewish immigrant assimilation Louis Armstrong
see Ralph Ellison on race and the mask Fred Astaire, “Bojangles in Harlem” Tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, African-American tap dancer in Swing Time (1936) Elvis Presley 1950s rock ’n’ roll Rock
Jimi Hendrix Michael Jackson (here with Paul McCartney in video for “Say Say Say,” 1983) Hip-hop the power of transgression
but also appropriation, circulation
racist, yes.
struggles over… centers & peripheries music & identity music business
the mask can be powerful from the bottom up as well as top down