Blackface nation : race, reform, and identity in American popular music, 1812-1925 / Brian Roberts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, Brian, 1957- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Music--History and criticism.

African Americans.

African Americans--Music.

Popular music--United States--19th century--History and criticism.

Popular music.

Popular music--United States--20th century--History and criticism.

Minstrel music--United States--History and criticism.

Minstrel music.

Music and race--United States--History.

Music and race.

History.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 360 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Summary:

As the United States transitioned from a rural nation to an urbanized, industrial giant between the War of 1812 and the early twentieth century, ordinary people struggled over the question of what it meant to be American. As Brian Roberts shows in 'Blackface Nation', this struggle is especially evident in popular culture and the interplay between two specific strains of music: middle-class folk and blackface minstrelsy. The Hutchinson Family Singers, the Northeast's most popular middle-class singing group during the mid-nineteenth century, are perhaps the best example of the first strain of music. The group's songs expressed an American identity rooted in communal values, with lyrics focusing on abolition, women's rights, and socialism. Blackface minstrelsy, on the other hand, emerged out of an audience-based coalition of Northern business elites, Southern slaveholders, and young, white, working-class men, for whom blackface expressed an identity rooted in individual self-expression, anti-intellectualism, and white superiority. Its performers embodied the love-crime version of racism, in which vast swaths of the white public adored African Americans who fit blackface stereotypes even as they used those stereotypes to rationalize white supremacy. By the early twentieth century, the blackface version of the American identity had become a part of America's consumer culture while the Hutchinsons' songs were increasingly regarded as old-fashioned.

Contents:

1 Carnival 24

2 The Vulgar Republic 47

3 Jim Crow's Genuine Audience 74

4 Black Song 103

5 Meet the Hutchinsons 127

6 Love Crimes 157

7 The Middle-Class Moment 187

8 Culture Wars 214

9 Black America 246

10 Conclusion: Musical without End 278.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226451503

022645150X

9780226451640

022645164X

OCLC:

958779970