Behind the burnt cork mask : early blackface minstrelsy and antebellum American popular culture / William J. Mahar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mahar, William J. (William John), 1938-

Series:

Music in American life

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Minstrel shows--United States.

Minstrel shows.

Popular culture--United States--History--19th century.

Popular culture.

United States.

History.

Physical Description:

xix, 444 pages : illustrations, music ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1999]

Summary:

The songs, dances, jokes, parodies, spoofs, and skits of blackface groups such as the Virginia Minstrels and Buckley's Serenaders became wildly popular in antebellum America. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask not only explores the racist practices of these entertainers but considers their performances as troubled representations of ethnicity, class, gender, and culture in the nineteenth century.

William J. Mahar's unprecedented archival study of playbills, newspapers, sketches, monologues, and music engages new sources previously not considered in twentieth-century scholarship. More than any other study of its kind, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask investigates the relationships between blackface comedy and other Western genres and traditions; between the music of minstrel shows and its European sources; and between "popular" and "elite" constructions of culture.

By locating minstrel performances within their complex sites of production, Mahar offers a significant reassessment of the historiography of the field. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask promises to redefine the study of blackface minstrelsy, charting new directions for future inquiries by scholars in American studies, popular culture, and musicology.

Contents:

List of musical examples

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

Revisiting minstrelsy's history: the playbill and contextual evidence

The playbills

Blackface parodies of American speech and rhetoric: burlesque lectures and sermons, political orations, comic dialogues, and stories

Opera for the masses: burlesques of English and Italian opera

Ethiopian sketches of American life: skits, farces, and afterpieces

Blackface minstrelsy, masculinity, and social rituals in vocal and choral repertories

Blackface minstrelsy and misogyny in vocal and choral repertories

Conclusion

Appendixes

Representitive minstrel companies and personnel in playbills and newspaper advertisements, 1843-60

Representative concluding numbers from selected minstrel shows, 1843-60

Song text frequency in selected antebellum songsters

Notes

Works cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-430) and index.

ISBN:

025202396X

0252066960

OCLC:

37615500