It goes back beyond the jazz performers, musicians such as Benny Goodman and the nice Jewish boys from the housing projects of Austin Hill in Chicago. But at the same time, there's an embrace of that culture that's happening on the stage at the same time. In 1862 during the American Civil War, Sam Sweeney enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving in Company H of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry. During the 1840s the show was divided into two parts--the first concentrated largely upon the urban black dandy, the second on the southern plantation slave. Which of the following is true about black southern gospel music? Public access to the Government documents is guaranteed by public law. They loved it. American Music I began my career as a rock journalist and critic. One of the biggest celebrities of the 1920-1930s was the singer who starred in "The Jazz Singer." Sweeney saw success, and by early 1843, he embarked on a European tour that included stops in London and Edinburgh. Webwhich white banjo virtuoso lead the virginia minstrels? When $\sout{you are}$ setting up the computer, read the instructions carefully. And so the conflict that minstrelsy is playing out is between America as a common-class culture or America as a middle-class culture. Copyright 2010 Center for American Music. "-JJ,:G.qQw?n5'#[ And from the beginning of my interest in rock and roll, I was fascinated by the question of, "When did it first become cool for white teenagers to pretend they were black?" Much more so than today, audiences controlled what went on the stage. Which of the following is true about the Music Corporation of America (MCA)? Which fiddler from East Texas led the Texas Playboys in hits like "New San Antonio Rose?". The banjo rim is deeper and has a wider diameter for much the same reason. People congregated around the footlights. And it was also the ability to laugh at them and feel superior to them because that was considered negative. He embraced both genteel traditions and less highly regarded but popular traditions such as minstrelsy. Which of the following became the conductor of the U.S. Marine Band? Dale Cockrell: Which film released in 1927 became the first to exploit sound successfully? He became the sniveling black man who was really a coward and was ignorant and somewhat comical in his connection to the slave masters. This is done to make the long strings and scale length more manageable. There were aesthetic components of this response as well as racial components, as well as class components of this response. Whereas the instrument's resonating chamber had formerly been constructed from a gourd (like the banjo's African ancestors and cousins), Sweeney popularized the use of a drum-like resonating chamber (legend has it that he adapted a cheese box for this purpose). Each play relied on stock humor and clichs. They say, "We'rewage slaves. "[3] In fact, there is no proof that Sweeney introduced either innovation. The publisher of Songs originally presented this copy to Napoleon W. Gould, a British musician who played in Emmett's minstrel troupe. Whether it's in the perceptions of black people who drive fancy cars -- Miles Davis complained about being pulled over every five minutes for driving a Maserati -- or whether it's in the hardly updated version of Jim Crow and something like the welfare mother. Which of the following was a well-known composer of plantation songs? So I learned many of these songs, usually with changed lyrics. Thus, parlor banjo was born, named after the private parlors of more well-to-do individuals and organizations in which it was performed. What was the first successful, all-black musical? And the tune featured not only an extraordinary dance but an extraordinary moment of elevation in which his body kind of exploded off the stage, turned around, wheeled around and jumped Jim Crow, with the exclamation on the "jump." They were trying to exaggerate and make [something] exotic. By the 1850s, however,black elements had been reduced and moved to the concluding section of a three part show. It need hardly be said that minstrelsy is about racial derision. So this industry grows during the nineteenth century and eventually becomes the entertainment industry that we know today, which is very complex. They first appeared in 1843. Who was the most influential songwriter of American popular song during the nineteenth century? Meet the influential author and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. So what was the difference? As a blackface performer, he introduced the "Jim Crow" character. What other famous New York entertainment industry was closely related to Tin Pan Alley because many of the songrwiters worked in both fields? {xO$S]%&7g>r=g8` And so it had an immense effect on the way mainstream society thought about blacks. In 1845, Joel, Sam, and Dick formed the minstrel troupe "Old Joe's Minstrels". And that may just be the condition of being white in America, but I think that there's a kind of evasion of the full implications of Foster. Recent article topics have included: Duke Ellington and early radio; John Cages HPSCHD; the WPA music copying project; defining the Easy Listening era; Milton Babbitt in academia; the soul roots of Bruce Springsteen; the benefit concerts of Jack Benny and Danny Kaye; and the boyhood of Henry Cowell. How did class issues relate to the race issues? It would be historically inaccurate for me, as a musicologist, to suggest that we abandon a repertory of music which is so historical because of the racial insensitivity of some of the text. The question of the moment was, what was America going to be? More recently, musicians such as Michael Miles, and in particular Rhiannon Giddens, have achieved huge followings by reviving the minstrel style with all its original feeling. He embraced both genteel traditions Mel Watkins: So Rice's characterization of blacks then reaffirmed what mainstream America had been thinking all along. WebWhich white banjo virtuoso lead the Virginia Minstrels? This photograph was taken at a minstrel show at the Elk's Lodge in Charlottesville, held on February 2 and 3, 1925. Monopoly es el juego de mesa favorito de Estados Unidos, una carta de amor al capitalismo desenfrenado y a nuestra sociedad de libre mercado. Joel Sweeney, a native of Appomattox, Virginia, popularized the African-inspired banjo, although Emmett favored the instrument in his compositions. His act featured two of the earliest Ethiopian songs to enjoy widespread popularity, "Long Tail Blue" and "Coal Black Rose.". Here you have a stage form that depends on caricature, yes, but a real desire on the part of white actors and performers to act like, to inhabit the bodies of black people, to act like them, to be like them, to impersonate them. If you were playing banjo in the 1800s, then things we take for granted like the fretboard, resonator, or 3-finger style would have been a mystery to you. Dick also died in 1860. 1994 University of Illinois Press It's done in ways in which people say, "This is authentic. Photograph of a blackface minstrel. And of course that was the minstrelsy, that's what was happening and the sort of the exaggerated caricatured stereotypical black dialect of minstrel songs in the 1830s and 1840s. Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. Around the same time that Sweeney was performing for the Queen, the concept of the minstrel show was beginning to take on solid form. As a blackface performer, he introduced the "Jim Crow" character. Whereas the parlor classes had pianos. Minstrel troupes toured the United States constantly from the 1840s until the 1870s, helping create an embryonic national popular culture. Center for American Music, U. of Pittsburgh, Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! Which of the following became the conductor of the U.S. Marine Band? Although early minstrelsy relied on existing American and British genres, by the 1820s the American minstrel show had developed a distinctive national character. That's precisely when issues around slavery and abolition begin to heat up -- not at the center of American politics but certainly as its margins and increasingly moving towards the center. Read about Charlotte Susanna Foster, Jane McDowell Foster,Stephen Collins Foster andWilliam Barclay Foster. Theatrical productions, concerts, dances, exhibitions, including Barnum-style "museums" all drew large audiences. The "walk-around," an ensemble finale, closed the shows on a high note. It came from the images portrayed in minstrelsy. endobj 1843The Virginia Minstrels 1. 2. American Music publishes articles on American composers, performers, publishers, institutions, events, and the music industry, as well as book and recording reviews, bibliographies, and discographies. The Press is a founding member of the Association of University Presses. I mean, masks do that. Although blackface minstrelsy was racist, did it have any benefit for African Americans? Which artist was the first black musician to host his own weekly radio series (1948-1949) and the first to have a network television show (1956-1957)? Mel Watkins: What was the first form of musical and theatrical entertainment regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character? That's one of the reasons why I emphasize that the lyrics have changed over the years. It starts out as a humorous and dance-oriented, music-oriented, joke-oriented variety show, in between other kinds of more formal theatrical acts, but over time minstrelsy becomes itself the entertainment. It's important to come to terms with Stephen Foster because we have to understand the racial complexity of American culture. Performers blackened their faces with cork and, by distorting elements of African-American culture, created stereotypes such as the urban dandy "Zip Coon" and the guileless plantation slave "Jim Crow.". Secondly, and perhaps even more embarrassing, is his extreme sentimentality in an age that prides itself on being ironic and cool. You can hardly look at the mimicking of African-American manners, mores, maybe music, maybe dance, and see that these people are being cast as somehow less than the people who are portraying them. The mask of blackface enabled you to have voice and to speak without fear of repression. Ken Emerson: Which of the following became the first nationwide commercial radio network in 1926? But I think that the rousing nature of the event -- I mean, this is a moment in theater history when it was typical and more or less sanctioned for men to rush the stage. The songs of Stephen Foster are, especially the minstrel songs, are problematic today. Middle-class culture is one that has worshipped the mind and has largely tried to divorce the body from the expression of what they are. It's not just done by whites to parody blacks. Scott Joplin Who invented the WebWhite actor born into a poor family in New York's Seventh Ward. These long, gut strings produce a far deeper tone than the nickel and steel ones used on modern banjos and are ideal for sliding around on the smooth fingerboard. By the middle of the 1830s there are tense riots directed against abolitionists in the North and in the South. Born to a farming family in Appomattox County, Virginia, he claimed to have learned to play the banjo from local enslaved Africans. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and throughout the 1830s Rice had many imitators. Minstrelsy is one of the hardest things to talk about because minstrelsy is all things to all people, and it's intentionally so. They never went "rolling down the river on Proud Mary," and yet that's what they sang about. %PDF-1.3 Minstrelsy was by no means the only form of popular entertainment of the time. He embraced both genteel traditions Our publication program covers a wide range of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, Black studies, women's studies, cultural studies, music, immigration, and more. Consider the following statement and choose the best response: Many dance bands in the 1920s specialized in one of three main categories, "hot," "sweet," and "Latin.". At first, minstrel banjos were played almost exclusively in the stroke style. Which of the This consists of a downpicking motion where strings are struck by the back of the nail and plucked with the thumb. He embraced both genteel traditions and less highly regarded but popular traditions such as minstrelsy. It becomes the first kind of a national theater or national entertainment that people began to see outside of their local setting. The difference was not so much a structural one because the musical style, the musical structure, the form of the melody and so forth, followed certain European patterns that were derived from the same kinds of music that genteel society were playing and singing. What legacy did blackface minstrelsy create for American culture today? << /Length 12 0 R /N 3 /Alternate /DeviceRGB /Filter /FlateDecode >> It presented the black character as being stupid, as being comical, as being basically a frivolous character. Additionally, the bridges on minstrel banjos tend to be positioned in the center of the head, or even higher, closer to the neck. << /Type /Page /Parent 3 0 R /Resources 6 0 R /Contents 4 0 R /MediaBox [0 0 612 792] "Outlandish claims have been made about Sweeney, from his being the "inventor" of the banjo to his being the first white man to play the banjo. xMHa$T&R+SeL b}wg-E"u.VDNC:DuE^";cT03y| URcE4`vztLUF\)s:k-iYj6|vP4*wd>,y4!7CN-lCTS3q";-E#+c> v=S79@`mvUl5`P=Gj)kP*}6 ~^/~.~a2 PBS American Experience page on minstrelsy, University of Virginia site on minstrelsy. Who lead the Ambassador Orchestra, the most successful dance band of the 1920s? In 1842, in New York City, the songwriter Daniel Decatur Emmett and three companions devised a program of singing and dancing in blackface to the 4 0 obj Which of the following is true about the country blues? An ex-minstrel show performer from a middle-class background, Bland wrote some seven hundred songs, including "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" (published in 1878, for a long time the official state song of Virginia) and "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" (published in 1879). Combined with a low tuning and thick, gut strings; the plunky, melancholic sound of stroke style on minstrel banjos reflects its dark history amongst slaves. Joel Walker Sweeney (1810 October 29, 1860), also known as Joe Sweeney, was an American musician and early blackface minstrel performer. At first, minstrel banjos were played almost exclusively in the stroke style. This consists of a downpicking motion where strings are struck by the back of the nail and plucked with the thumb. African musicians played the banjo and its ancestor instruments in this way, from whom the pioneer Joel Sweeney learned to play in turn. WebPopular Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Minstrelsy and Stephen Foster In colonial America the banjo was known as an instrument of "the lower classes,"[8] but by 1841, Sweeney was remaking the banjo into an instrument for the middle class. Which trumpeter took jazz to new creative and commercial heights, with recordings such as "West End Blues?". Successful turn-of-the-century songwriter sometimes referred to as the "Daddy of Popular Song"; his big hits included "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" (1900) and "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)" (1911). document.documentElement.className += 'js'; Josephine Wright: CD 2854, From today's perspective, the minstrel show raises disturbing questions about racism and entertainment. It was the way the world was. Mel Watkins: Music of the "genteel" tradition now prevailed in the first section, where popular and sentimental ballads of the day and polished minstrel songs, including those of Foster, supplanted the older and cruder dialect tunes. The audience for minstrelsy, especially after the 1830s and into the 1840s was a quite localized and specific working class, lower middle-class, mostly male audience that responded very vocally to the kinds of syncopated, pre-rock-and-roll sounds that were put forward on the minstrel stage. The 1870s saw a steep decline in the minstrel style of play. Finger picking would soon overtake it as the dominant banjo style, although minstrel style remained popular and was preserved in the isolated Appalachian mountains and out West. Professional minstrelsy waned at the turn of the century as troupes turned to vaudeville, burlesque, and the emerging Broadway musical theater. Where was the Minstrel Show most popular? Which of the following became the conductor of the US Marine Band? The "father of American minstrelsy" was Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice, who, between 1828 and 1831, developed a song-and-dance routine in which he impersonated an old, crippled black slave, dubbed Jim Crow. That Stephen Foster wrote songs in an idiom that is just simply an anathema to me as an American, to me as a human being in the 1990s, and that I would never possibly think in any form of either wanting to hear or sing -- that's true. Walter Page (bass), Jo Jones (drums), and Freddie Green (guitar) formed the hard-swinging nucleus of which Kansas City-based big band? That's when you really get the negative characterization of blacks as the total comic fool, and that is what minstrelsy was about, to a certain extent. Nonetheless, the musical form represents America's first indigenous musical theater. He supposedly added the fifth string because he was "allegedly unhappy with the limited rhythm and melodic variation of the four-string banjos popularly in use. I think we're losing something in not repeating his lyrics or in adapting them, changing them to make them more politically correct, because he was trying to blend some things and create an awareness that we need to remember. A twelve-bar structure made up of three phrases of four bars each. Which Spanish-born violinist, film star, and bandleader was known as the "Rhumba King" and did the most to popularize Latin music during the swing era? Which of the following was an influential ragtime pianist and composer? It won't do any good, I believe, simply to sweep Stephen Foster under the rug of political correctness and ignore both the racism that is endemic in his music and the many instances in which his music transcends that racism. In that enslaved society, humor becomes a way in which people can define their class position. 2023 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. By the 1840s, the banjo was widely associated with southern slaves through minstrel shows, performed by white men in blackface, which became the prevailing form of theatrical entertainment in America for most of the century. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and throughout the 1830s Rice had many imitators. At its core, however, the banjo always remained, supported by percussion, fiddle, and other traditional slave instruments. Which is the best definition of "strophe? Example 1. What you have, in both cases, are works that reach very deeply into major American paradoxes, historical contradictions around race, racism and slavery, and the nature of artistic production. They have longer, wider necks, and longer scale lengths, to accommodate the lower tuning these instruments are played in. WebAll we Ever Wanted Anthology, Which White Banjo Virtuoso Lead The Virginia Minstrels?, Halloween Peeps 2020, hisztria kezelse, Holly Dolly Christmas Vinyl arany, elad hzak a Knockmore Ballinban, Co Mayo, Sace Durban kapcsolattart szma, Sace oktat Bejelentkezs, On the other hand, they feel like they've been reduced to slavery and so that they are not all that different from slaves on the plantation and there is a kind of, I think, a kind of felt identification of, based on oppression, given these two labor systems: a really kind of booming capitalist industrialism in the North and a slave economy, plantation economy in the South. It's a way for people to negotiate or to think about or to find humor in an extremely problematic aspect of American society, which they are arguing about in their politics and in government and in other ways. The basic features of the blues form include which of the following? It was much cruder. If the word cannot be divided, write *DND* for do not divide. Rather, it's more and more standardized, it's more and more routinized. The classic blues included artists like Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, and Ethel Waters. In addition Minstrel shows usually had a fiddler, a bones player and a drum/tambourine. Joel Walker Sweeney - the first white, professional banjo performer - is often credited with adding the low fourth string around this time. I believe as a teacher, and as a historian, that they should be placed in the historical context and people should understand where these songs fit and why. The large opposition is a rising American middle-class that wants to cast what it is to be American in a middle-class image. In July 1843, Sweeney played during entr'actes at the Adelphi Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. This is where the striking finger glides' across multiple strings, sounding them out individually in quick succession. Both featured stereotyped caricatures rather than genuine depictions of blacks, and were usually demeaning. Secondly, all minstrel banjos are completely fretless. Joel Sweeney's younger brothers, Sampson ("Sam") and Richard ("Dick"), and his sister Missouri were also talented banjo and fiddle players. And by the 1860s black performers [were] going on the stage themselves and performing in a similar manner. What was the first form of musical and theatrical entertainment regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character? [The blackface minstrel show] was a place of incredible release from all that. And in many ways it's a song that enabled us to begin to undo racial bigotry and prejudices that exist in this country. Finger picking would soon overtake it as the dominant banjo style, although minstrel style remained popular and was preserved in the isolated Appalachian mountains and out West. a. Thomas Dartmouth Rice b. George Washington Dixon c. Daniel Emmett d. Edgar Meyer e. Alison Kraus Which of the But it goes back a lot further than Beck's imitating a rap star, saying, "I got two turntables and a microphone," or Elvis Presley singing, "That's All Right, Mama" in emulation of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. In addition to being a songwriter, he was a master brewer and created the recipe for Foster's Premium Ale, d. He embraced both genteel traditions and less highly regarded but popular traditions such as minstrelsy, e. He was known for his flashy guitar solos. What is the musical term for a memorable musical phrase? I think it becomes much clearer when one looks at black minstrelsy again because when black minstrels started to take to the stage, they were advertised as the real thing. Current issues are available through the Scholarly Publishing Collective. Which White actor invented the minstrel character Jim Crow?. James Bland, composer of "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia," and Sam Lucas became known as the leading performers of African-American minstrel shows and eventually branched into other forms of musical theater. Which of the following is true about Al Jolson's 1921 recording of "April Showers"? It's actually getting inside the persons of slaves and free blacks in the North, and there are whole sets of complications and contradictions that arise from that simple fact. As time wore on and the banjo's popularity and player base grew, alternative ways of playing it began to emerge. The banjo as described above did not assume its familiar, 5-string form until at least the 1820s. 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