In the 19th century, American whites decided that they enjoyed the music and dance the slaves had created. In minstrel shows, white entertainers parodied their conception of slave life and popularized the African style of dance and music. With white dancers as the star performers of the minstrel and vaudeville show, it was difficult for a black dancer to gain stature as part of a dance troupe. Because of this, many black performers migrated to Europe, where they introduced the newly emerging forms of jazz music and jazz dance. In Europe, these talented and innovative performers were more well-received than in America. The minstrel show evolved and was eventually absorbed into the 20th century musical comedy.…
Rice’s portrayal of a disfigured dancing shuffling black man lasted from the 1830s to the 1850s, the helped establish the iconic fictional character, Jim Crow as well as, Zip Coon, and Jim Dandy (Pilgrim, 39). The irony is that during that time, the songs and dances of this Jim Crow Jubilee brought mixed races together rather than the later segregation laws would suppress. Spanning the twenty years of blackface, mockingly to what we know today hidden in the very songs and artistry the message resembled not the oppressed but the “working-class integration” (Lhamon, Jr., vii). It would appear that American political law makers “censored” this fact using this term instead to bring about oppressive segregative policies in repealing Black American citizenship and constitutional rights. Nonetheless, the icon was born spawning early theater to blackface throughout the minstrel era, to vaudeville to early American cinema. The minstrel shows – whose performers appeared with faces blackened by sooty burnt-cork makeup – followed an elaborate ritual in their burlesque of Negro life in the Old South. Already well-established before the Civil War, they succeeded in fixing the black man in the American consciousness …” (Leab,…
The timeless Kern and Hammerstein classic Show Boat is a musical far beyond its time. Rich with beautiful music and characters but also a plot that surpassed anything of the time period. This show was a preface for Hammerstein’s intricate styling of compiling a show’s plot and lyric. His trend, portrayed in Show Boat and many of his other productions, pairs a lighthearted sound and classic love stories with powerful social, specifically racial, issues of that time period. Show Boat is an early masterpiece that provided a springboard for Hammerstein’s illustrious career.…
When we think of musicals, the first thing we think of is ‘Wicked’, or ‘Lion King’, or the “Book or Mormon’. Chicago is a musical which defies all these cutesy stereotypes. It’s a powerful 113 play which is all about corruption, crime, and media manipulation. This dark play, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, is the longest running musical on Broadway. Originally opened in 1975, it failed to impressed audiences and it was shut down, after a meagre two-year release. It was reopened on Broadway in 1996, and has been running since. So will this play impress me, or will it make me realise why it failed to impress early audiences?…
Minstrelsy in America, for most of its insignificant irrationality and noticeable quality, was an exploitative kind of melodic theater that distorted certified dull conditions and braced dangerous speculations in the midst of the nineteenth and twentieth several years. The way that blackface minstrelsy began in the before the war time period and drove forward all through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration, with performers assembling and including social points of view from each period to their shows, signs at the impact, popularity, and capriciousness of the minstrel show up. Racial abuse and the trust in dull average quality remained at minstrelsy's base notwithstanding the way that the structure of the shows and subjects discussed in the music moved after some time.…
After the Civil War, a number of minstrel troupes had managers or owners who were black. The first reason this surprised me is that I didn’t think blacks were widely accepted on the stage at that time. Next, I found it extremely ironic that blacks were playing caricatures which were meant to mock their own race. They were essentially imitating themselves and not in a positive perspective. I didn’t understand why they would want to perform blackface and enforce the negative racial stereotypes that already existed in society. As I did more research and thought deeper into the idea of blacks performing in blackface minstrelsy, I realized that it was simply a way for them to make a living. For black musicians, minstrelsy performance was a necessary way to financial safety. This made their participation in the shows more understandable but still I doubt that they got paid very much and I can’t imagine going on stage and making fun of my race in such a crude and unrealistic…
Audiences had become attached to the minstrel shows as the earliest form of a musical revue. With the minstrel shows, they had become attached to the Negro images they presented (Hay 15). The actors of the early 20th century musicals did not mind the stereotypical images at first. The most important thing to them was that for the first time, Black artists could make a living in the performing arts (18). The minstrel label should however influence the themes and forms of musical theatre of the ensuing…
Black Minstrelsies were an American made form of entertainment, fueled off the mockery of African Americans in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The performers would wear blackface, sing, dance, perform comedy skits and perform old-time fiddle tunes with rudimentary harmonic progressions . The songs would often have no story of substance and would instead have illogical and aloof lyrics accompanied by a dance-tune based melody. Minstrel performances depicted black people as being feeble-minded simple half-wits as it became centered on the degradation of African Americans. In, addition the characters in these Minstrelsies would often come off as being inhuman. Therefore, the actors’ would sport exaggerated facial features while dressed up…
“JAZZ” is a documentary by Ken Burns released 2001 that focuses on the creation and development of jazz, America’s “greatest cultural achievement.” The first episodes entitled, “Gumbo, Beginnings to 1917” and “The Gift (1917-1924), explain the early growth of jazz as it originates in New Orleans and its expands to Chicago and New York during the Jazz Age. In assessing the first two episodes of Ken Burns' 2001 documentary, "JAZZ," this essay will explore the history of jazz, the music's racial implications, and it's impact on society. In doing so, attention will also be given to the structure of the documentary, and the effectiveness of documentary film in retelling the past.…
Some on a huge scale like, Tyler Perry’s “Medea’s Family Reunion”, and some on a much smaller scale, perhaps on Halloween. Blackface Minstrelsy in a way did shape vulgar humor in America’s entertainment business. Stereotypes come to life in the typical characters of blackface minstrels not only played an important role in solidifying and booming racist attitudes, images, and insights worldwide, but also in popularizing black culture. In some quarters, the characters that were the creation of blackface continue to the present day and are a cause of continuing debate. Although the scale of racism might have fallen greatly, the cruel humor that comes along with blackface is not ok. It began in a time when foundation had just been set on what our nation should be. The north was fresh out of slavery and the south deep within it. The black man was still seen as different breed. Blackface minstrelsy was a cruel beginning to America’s entertainment…
Starr and Waterman suggest that the popularity of Minstrelsy can be understood as more than a projection of white racism and that “working-class white youth expressed their own sense of marginalization through an identification with African American cultural forms (Starr/Waterman 2007, p.19).” In addition, it was during the Minstrel era that “the most pernicious stereotypes of black people,” including “the big-city knife toting dandy (the “bad negro”) - became enduring images in mainstream American culture, disseminated by an emerging entertainment industry and patronized by a predominantly white mass audience.” (Starr/Waterman 2007, p.21).…
The television program Soul Train was undoubtedly a watershed moment in entertainment media (specifically televised ‘bandstand’ formats). What started as an attempt to re-brand, or re-cast, blacks in mainstream American media quickly became a cultural, social, and economic phenomenon of its own. Although the show is seminole for a whole host of reasons in terms of achievement for black entrepreneurs, musicians, and the like, what I find more compelling is the way the program became an agent for black culture and its evolution from the shows inception to finale, as well as a way to make black culture ‘mainstream’ and thus appealing to a wider audience outside of racial constraints. This program was really the first of its kind that catered to an audience who had largely been neglected by mainstream media prior and it both influenced the common reality/culture of this audience as well as was shaped by it as the show progressed. This process of ‘making’, then, cuts both ways in this case as the media influences the audience and vice versa.…
The first time I had experienced discrimination in the performing arts was in the high school production of “The Wizard of Oz”. I had made it through the audition and was now competing in call backs in which they decide the lead roles. I was auditioning for (as most girls were) the Lead role Dorothy. I sang the songs with confidence and watched as others did the same. After the audition was finished, I asked one of the student judges his thoughts about my performance. With a stern face he said, “To be honest, you’ve got the talent for a lead but we're casting The Wizard of Oz, not The Wiz”. Upon seeing my puzzled expression, he continued. “ Theres' a level of expectation in a show so lead parts aren’t meant to be so...ethnic,” he said in a harsh tone and then walked away. I remember holding back tears as it was evident that he wanted to cast a good show; just not including a black actress.…
In early works, some dating back to 1888, black actors were not hired to play black roles, but rather white actors were hired to play these characters while wearing “blackface” (Padgett). Blackface is theatrical makeup that is used by non-black actors in order to play a black person. Due to the fact that blackface was first introduced in the early years of film, ideas of African Americans were shaped based on this portrayal. Performances known as minstrel shows consisted of three parts that were meant to show inferiority of African Americans. The shows began with a “walkaround” which showed actors stomping around and dancing. The second part was known as the olio, which consisted of what was known as stump speech. This was meant to imply that African Americans were not able to speak proper English. They were shown as being unable to use the language and vocabulary. Minstrel shows ended with an obvious fraudulent depiction of what life was like for these individuals during this time. Slaves were shown appreciating their treatment or ignoring it altogether. While the injustice in the media is not anything like it was, it still is not what it should…
African American Theater started out, hundreds of years ago, as a foundation of amusement for the black community. The theater was a place where African Americans, equally men and women, could work, study, and perfect their expertise. The beginning of African American theater set in motion back in the 1830’s, and it eventually became one of America’s most prevalent sources of entertainment…