Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, is an indigenous form of American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, usually performed by white people in blackface. Although blackface dates back to at least 1769, the minstrel show as such has later origins. It began with brief burlesques and comic entr'actes in the early 1830s and emerged as a full-fledged form in the next decade. In the 1850s, minstrelsy was at least partially absorbed into the many "Tom shows", melodramas based at least loosely on Uncle Tom's Cabin. By the end of that decade, minstrel shows as such had become a "lifeless… profitable" institution{{ref|Lott-intro}}, which lingered on for several decades and largely faded out before the turn of the century. Blackface survived minstrelsy by some decades, as it had preceded it.

Structure and content

The Christy Minstrels established the basic structure of the minstrel show in the 1840s. The performance was divided into three major sections. During the first, the entire troupe sang and danced onto stage. Upon the instruction of the Interlocutor, a sort of host for the show, they then arranged themselves in a semi-circle and sat down. Various stock characters always took the same positions: the genteel Interlocutor sat in the middle, flanked by Tambo and Bones who served as the endmen or cornermen. The Interlocutor and the endmen then exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs. Over time, this part also came to include maudlin numbers not always performed in blackface. Finally, each member of the company performed a solo dance or other act at the center of the semicircle during a section called the walk-around, cakewalk, or hoedown. This first section usually had a northern or geographically indeterminate setting; the character of the black dandy figured prominently.

Related Topics:
Interlocutor - Tambo - Bones

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The second portion of the show, called the olio, was historically the last to evolve. It had more of a variety-show structure. Performers would dance, play instruments, do acrobatics, and demonstrate other amusing talents. Parodies of European-style entertainments were offered, and European troupes themselves sometimes performed. Blackface actors would often deliver stump speeches during the olio. These were long orations, often about society and politics, during which the dim-witted character tried to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional puns. Nevertheless, these stump speeches often delivered biting social criticism{{ref|Scheytt-criticism}}.

Related Topics:
Variety-show - Stump speeches

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After the olio, the afterpiece was performed. In the early days of the minstrel show, this was often a skit set on a Southern plantation that usually included a number of musical and dance numbers. In later years, performers began to perform burlesque renditions of other plays; both Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights were common targets. The afterpiece allowed the minstrels to introduce new characters, some of whom became quite popular and spread from troupe to troupe.

Related Topics:
Afterpiece - Plantation - Burlesque

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stock characters

The minstrel show relied on a few stock characters, each representing a specific black stereotype: the coon, the darky, the wench, the mammy, the Tom, and the pickaninny, among others. The white actors who portrayed these characters spoke an ersatz, exaggerated form of Black English Vernacular.

Related Topics:
Stereotype - Wench - Mammy - Pickaninny - Black English Vernacular

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thomas "Daddy" Rice brought the earliest of these archetypes to the American stage when he began to perform the Jump Jim Crow dance. He claimed to have learned the dance by watching an old, limping black man who worked as a stable hand. The man was dancing and singing the lyrics "Wheel about and turn about and do jus' so/Eb'ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow." The dance became extremely popular, and Rice toured the country performing it in blackface. Other early minstrel performers quickly adopted Rice's "Jim Crow," and the character would later give his name to the racial segregation laws of the 1870s.

Related Topics:
Jump Jim Crow - Segregation laws - 1870s

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jim Crow continued to be a feature of some minstrel shows, but he was eventually replaced by two characters named for the instruments they played: Tambo (for the tambourine) and Bones (for the bones, a rhythm instrument similar to castanets). These two characters served as the endmen and were shown to be simple-minded and unsophisticated by playing them off the Interlocutor, a white man who spoke in aristocratic English and used a much larger vocabulary. The humor of these exchanges came from the misunderstandings on the part of the black characters when talking to the white Interlocutor. A typical exchange went something like this:

Related Topics:
Tambourine - Bones - Castanets

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:Interlocutor: I'm astonished at you, Why, the idea of a man of your mental calibre talking about such sordid matters, right after listening to such a beautiful song! Have you no sentiment left?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:Tambo: No, I haven't got a cent left.{{ref|Paskman-example}}

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two, stock, female characters were the sexually provocative wench and the matronly, often overbearing mammy. These female roles were played by men (most famously Barney Williams and George Christy) in drag, this at a time when American theater outside of minstrelsy was filled with actresses{{ref|Lott-actresses}}. The humor often turned on the male characters' desire for a woman who would be perceived by the audience as unattractive{{ref|Lott-women}}.

Related Topics:
Barney Williams - George Christy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Zip Coon was a common character in the afterpiece. He was a typical dandy, a northern urban black man trying to live above his station by mimicking white, upper-class speech and dress, usually to no good effect.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Music and dance

Many songs still popular today had their origins in minstrelsy, a fact that underscores the importance of music to the minstrel show as a whole. These numbers were the heart of the show and a large reason for its popularity. Troupes even marketed sheet music of the songs they featured so that viewers could enjoy them at home. Some commentators even described the music as vulgar because it was (as The Spirit of the Times said of the Ethiopian Serenaders on October 9, 1847) "entirely too elegant" and that the "excellence" of the singing " an objection to it."{{ref|Lott-vulgar}}

Related Topics:
Ethiopian Serenaders - October 9 - 1847

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Despite the elements of ridicule contained in blackface performance, mid-19th century white audiences by and large believed the songs and dances to be authentically black{{ref|Lott-authentic}}. For their part, the minstrels always billed themselves and their music as such. The songs were called "plantation melodies" or "Ethiopian choruses", among other names{{ref|Scheytt-music}}. The music was, in fact, based on the European tradition with distinct Irish and Scottish folk music influences being prevalent and leading to a juxtaposition of "vigorous earth-slapping footwork of black dances ... with the Irish lineaments of blackface jigs and reels."{{ref|Lott-reels}} The minstrel-show texts sometimes even mixed black lore with Southwestern humor, itself a mixture of traditions from different races and cultures. Minstrel instruments were also a mélange: African banjo, bones, and tambourine with European fiddle. Minstrel music and dance was not true black culture; it was a white reaction to it{{ref|Lott-reaction}}.

Related Topics:
Irish - Scottish - Folk music - Fiddle

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The reasons for this are fairly straightforward. The minstrels had to please their audience, predominantly white Northerners, by playing music the spectators would find familiar and pleasant. By using the black caricatures and black music, the minstrels added a touch of the unknown to the evening's entertainment, which was enough to fool audiences into accepting the whole performance as authentic. Furthermore, the white minstrel performers had little ready access to authentic black music, anyway. They could not have learned and played it without traveling to the South and finding a slave owner who would allow his slaves to play their own music in the first place{{ref|Scheytt-authenticity}}. Insofar as the minstrels had authentic contact with black culture, it was via neighborhoods, taverns, theaters, and waterfronts where blacks and whites could mingle freely. Many troupes claimed nevertheless to have carried out more serious "fieldwork"{{ref|Lott-fieldwork}}.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That said, some scholars argue that some of the earliest minstrels did in fact travel to the South to observe slave music. The inauthenticity of the minstrel music and the Irish and Scottish elements in it are explained by the fact that slaves were rarely allowed to play native African music and therefore had to adopt and adapt the folk songs of Europe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The minstrels' dance styles, on the other hand, were much more true to their alleged source. Dances like the Turkey Trot, the Buzzard Lope, and the Juba Dance all had their origins in the plantations of the South, and some were popularized by black performers. William Henry Lane, a free black man from Rhode Island, earned fame as Master Juba with his rendition of the Juba Dance, for example. This element of the show was generally not held to the same mockery as other parts, though Fanny Kemble, who had travelled in the South, described minstrel-show dance as "faint, feeble, impotent—in a word, pale Northern reproductions of that ineffable black conception."{{ref|Lott-dance}}

Related Topics:
Turkey Trot - Buzzard Lope - Juba Dance - William Henry Lane - Rhode Island - Master Juba - Fanny Kemble

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The music of the minstrels portrayed a romanticized version of the South and plantation life. The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and of largely white origin{{ref|Lott-lyrics}}. Slaves were always shown to be cheerful and singing. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful, and some of these are still popular today, such as "Dixie's Land", "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", and "My Old Kentucky Home"{{ref|Scheytt-songs}}. Some of this racism (and misogyny) was rather vicious. There were "comic" songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes{{ref|Lott-vicious}}. On the other hand, the fact that the minstrel show broached the subjects of slavery and race at all is perhaps more significant than the racist manner in which it did so{{ref|Lott-slavery}}.

Related Topics:
Dixie's Land - Carry Me Back to Old Virginny - My Old Kentucky Home - Racism - Misogyny

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~