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Spirituals and the birth of a black entertainment industry / Sandra Jean Graham.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania - Closed Stacks ML 3556 .G77 2018
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Graham, Sandra J. (Sandra Jean), author.
- Series:
- Music in American life
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Jubilee Singers (Fisk University).
- African Americans--Music--History and criticism.
- African Americans.
- Spirituals (Songs)--United States--19th century--History and criticism.
- Spirituals (Songs).
- Minstrel shows--United States--History--19th century.
- Minstrel shows.
- African Americans--Music.
- Jubilee singers.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Spirituals (Songs)
- Minstrel shows.
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- History.
- Physical Description:
- xvi, 330 pages : illustrations, music ; 24 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2018]
- Summary:
- Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they laid the foundation for a black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century [Publisher description]
- Contents:
- Introduction.
- The folk spiritual.
- Part I. The rise of a jubilee industry
- The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University
- The Fisk concert spiritual
- Innovators, imitators, and a jubilee industry.
- Part II. Spirituals for the masses.
- The minstrel show gets religion
- Commercial spirituals
- Spirituals in Uncle Tom shows, melodramas, and spectacles
- Blurring boundaries between traditional and commercial
- Conclusion: lessons and legacies.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-312) and index.
- Local Notes:
- The Balch Ethnic Studies Collection.
- The Forrest Performing Arts Collection.
- The Pennsylvania Abolition Society Complementary Collection.
- ISBN:
- 9780252041631
- 0252041631
- 9780252083273
- 025208327X
- OCLC:
- 1004765337
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