Customer Reviews

Early Minstrel Show

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ethiopian minstrelsy was the most popular form of theatrical entertainment in the U.S. from the late 1820's until well after the Civil War, having a huge cultural impact and creating racial stereotypes that linger today. A minstrel show featured stories, songs and skits which tried to imitate (and usually parodied) the culture of blacks, as interpretted by white performers with blackened faces. In this way, through composers such as Stephen Foster, black culture entered the white mainstream, and much of this music entered the oral traditions of both whites and blacks. This CD re-creates the music based upon sheet music, instrumental instruction books, and manuscript musical materials. Yet, except for the texts, I found the music very similar to just about any traditional string band you hear at a folk festival today. So it's easy to see that this music is still influencing the culture. There are those who might feel this music should be long forgotten due to it's racist lyrics, but I think it's important to know the past in order to understand the present, and this CD provides a scholarly and entertaining trip into the past.

It may be baffling and embarrassing to us today, but blackface minstrelsy was one of the first genuinely American cultural creations, spectacularly popular entertainment throughout much of the 19th century (and even into the 20th), and the first successful American cultural export. It also is the foundation of much modern American popular music. You can't help but flinch at the flagrant racism, but anyone with an interest in American music needs to understand minstrelsy and its legacy. This outstanding CD is a fine place to start. The songs represent a cross-section of the most popular tunes of the pre-Civil War era. The performances are informed by the best scholarship on the practices of the period, but are lively and natural.

What is perhaps most disturbing is that this is excellent popular music that stands the test of time much better than the benign melodramatic parlor music of the same era. That this music is so lively, entertaining and infectious, and in many ways reverential of genuine African-American music, while at the same time so casually cruel and demeaning highlights a fundamental paradox of America's cultural history.

Whether we like it or not, most American popular music and entertainment traces back to the minstrel show. Of course, the genre has not dated well in the intervening years. Rife with racial sterotypes, including dialect, racial slurs, ridiculous caricatures and blackface, many prefer to simply bury this national embarrassment in the dustbin of history. Regardless, over the past twenty years or so a small group of historians and re-enactors have increasingly grown curious about pre Civil War music and performance. This has led them smack into the ugly maw of minstrel music, which dominated the American stage for almost a century. One of them, Robert Winans, a now retired English professor, wanted to know how this music may have sounded. His chance came via a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that created New World Records, which sought to record the music of America, including minstrel music. "The Early Minstrel Show" resulted and remains one of the best recordings of minstrel music available, not to mention one of the first, if not the first, recordings ever made of this unique style. But beware, this is the real thing.

The album was recorded, complete with the unedited language and diction of its time, for scholarly and historical purposes, not to aggrandize or promote the now offensive racial elements it contains. Admittedly, some people won't make it through this recording. Like a Dorian Gray portrait, it has the power to conjure up some ugly things that still lay buried in American history. But for those who can enjoy it on multiple levels it can also have a liberating and effervescent effect. Musically, it has an infectious energy that immediately exposes its wide appeal to 19th century audiences. Historically, it helps put things in context. So much of this era remains hidden that few know just how bad things were. The minstrel age, seen through the lens of today, contains nefarious elements of American culture that many would rather not acknowledge. It's a mirror we don't want to look into. But we should look. Many of our ancestors sang and danced to this music and it informed their notion of society and race which traces directly to our time, where prejudice remains. And though the early minstrel show of the 1830s - 1850s, represented here, was somewhat more restrained compared with the late 19th century "coon song" era, subsequent musical developments and racial attitudes trace their lineage to this now murky time. This collection helps bring that time alive, warts and all. As such, it helps to inform the present and the intervening years.

Some of the most famous early minstrel songs appear here, written by the genre's big names: Dan Emmett, Stephan Foster and Joel Sweeney. The arrangements follow the earliest known minstrel show formation: 4 players including the requisite banjo, bones, fiddle, tamborine and vocal. Bones, often wooden sticks or literally animal bones, provide driving rhythms framed by melodic banjo, fiddle and vocal harmonies to stunning effect. A frenetic banjo solo, "Hard Times," concludes the set, written by Tom Briggs who claimed to have learned his technique and select melodies directly from slaves. A genuine African musical influence lurks in nearly all early minstrel and early banjo music, as is apparent in many songs here. The earliest minstrel shows strove to mimic the music and histrionics of slaves, though they often ended up only mocking them. Crowds loved it, much to our amazement today. Overall, the album includes some very danceable, singable and memorable tunes, which also adds to the tension and may make some listeners recoil even more. But for those who seek a historical experience, or just want to focus on the music and detach from the overall ethos, this collection has much to offer. Obviously, those looking for the minstrel show's big picture will find it here in droves. A lot of research and effort went into this recording, and it shows. The liner notes, available with the CD or from the New World Records website, provide more background on the songs, the history of the minstrel show and the recording. Though Winans wanted to include much more, which he has made available on his website, including song lyrics and multiple essays on this the most maligned, ignored and controversial product of American popular culture.

The music is disturbing, but is accurately portrayed. Played on period corret instruments by people who understand that this music is not to be celebrated, but studied and understood. If we do not study and understand our history (even our darkest hours) we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Thanks for this view into a dark period of our musical experience!!

White Blackface minstrelsy (when Black minstrelsy emerged after the civil war it was another question) was one of the first popular musics to go multinational, spreading at its inception in the 1840s to Britain, Ireland, and other English speaking countries. It was a combination of the racist views European Americans and Europeans had to Black people with a large order of Black music thrown in. It was where the banjo ceased to be a private instrument played among Black folks for Black folks, and became an instrument played by the non-Black. It is where the banjo went from being known as an African instrument played by African origined people in the Caribbean and its environs like the US to being misidentified as an African instrument.

There is very much we have learned about the origins of African American and European American banjo playing from players on this album who are also scholars who went back to the minstrel tutors and musical manuscripts and revived this music. Most of the early minstrel banjoists made no secret that they derived their banjo styles from African Americans or from folk taught banjo by African Americans. These people brought the music to life and in doing so opened doors that have lead us to understand the akonting and other African instruments that prefigured the banjo.

At the same time, I find the African and African American aspects of minstrelsy to be overemphasized these days. Even in these reproductions of early minstrel material, you also see a lot of very purely European and European American music with much less trace of African and African American influence than contemporary European American banjo and string band music. This is part of the real interest of this music, as well as whatever trace it provides of Black banjo styles that the minstrels copied.