... democratic principles. This vicarious voice is exemplified in two iconic American institutions born from Jacksonian ideology--musical theater (via blackface minstrelsy) and Mormonism. This chapter argues that examining the two together creates an important case study for how a unified American sound...

... such as the phonograph, motion pictures, and radio accelerated the spread into New England of African American jazz, which was heartily embraced by many in a region where blackface minstrelsy was enormously popular. There was a palpable tension throughout the region as newcomers and old Yankees alike struggled to retain...

...This chapter examines the musical, cultural, and sociological elements of blackface minstrelsy's “creole synthesis” throughout the Caribbean and the British colonies of North America. It argues that the conditions for the creole synthesis were present virtually from the first encounters of Anglo...

...This book has constructed a portrait of the multiethnic nineteenth-century world that gave birth to blackface minstrelsy using primary sources such as demographics, tune repertoires, archival materials, and most especially iconography. Drawing on evidence from the biographical experience and visual...

... Lyons Fred Moton Robert Robinson’s Circus “Wear dem Golden Slippers to Walk dem Golden Streets ” blackface minstrelsy religious parody commercial spirituals imitation spirituals folk spiritual concert spiritual publication of commercial spirituals Hamtown Students (white) Ham-Town Students...

... of this instrument’s history, i.e., its origins among enslaved populations and its cooptation by white entertainers involved in blackface minstrelsy. The response among old-time banjoists has been surprisingly positive, in large part because the playing technique required is very similar to what is currently favored...

...This chapter argues that disparaging ideas of disability amplified perceptions of racial difference in blackface minstrelsy and freak shows, which shored up fragile notions of whiteness to wide audiences. This is evident in Thomas “Daddy” Rice’s 1829 creation of Jim Crow when he witnessed...

...” commercial spiritual “Jubilee Echoes” Georgia Minstrels sketch jubilee industry plantation culture White George L Camp meeting folk spiritual blackface minstrelsy parody of religious song religious burlesque Walter Bray Charley Howard “Carry the News—We Are All Surrounded” (minstrel song) Simmons...

... Club Tuskegee Choir Spirituals blackface minstrelsy early black entertainment Fisk Jubilee Singers jubilee singers Donavin’s Original Tennesseans (jubilee singers) Nashville Students (jubilee singers) Uncle Tom’s Cabin onstage (postwar) environmental spectacles featuring plantation themes...

...This book traces the roots of blackface minstrelsy—and the creole sounds, practices, and procedures that made minstrelsy possible—by analyzing the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, ephemera, and biography of William Sidney Mount, together with similar materials from some of his...

... of blackface minstrelsy's creole synthesis in the antebellum period by describing two festival performances, Pinkster and 'Lection Day, and during the Federalist period. It then assesses the creole synthesis in black Manhattan by focusing on the “African Grove” Theater, along with Mount's first works and new...

...This chapter examines the material culture of blackface minstrelsy, and particularly of instrumental dance music in the “creole synthesis,” using evidence drawn from William Sidney Mount's four paintings: Just in Tune (1849), Right and Left (1850), Just...

... repertoires, including the ongoing resources represented by Anglo-Celtic music and dance; the newer dance-types of the polka, quadrille, and cotillion; and the already-creolized tunes explicitly associated with blackface minstrelsy and New York comic theatricals. The chapter suggests that the black–white...

... blackface minstrelsy as a representation of whites imitating Southern white ideals and images of blackness. English Opera House Maryland Matthews Charles New England New York City Philadelphia African Grove Theater fiddle Hewlett James National Advocate “Opossum Up a Gum Tree ” Shakespeare...

... American life. Within this environment, banjo builders provide not only instruments that continuously reference a collectively imagined past, but also expand that same conception to include elements that have heretofore been overlooked or purposely ignored, such as blackface minstrelsy and the role...

...This chapter offers an overview of musical theater’s development in America, arguing for a reassessment of New York City’s centrality in the genre’s history. Musical theater emerges out of vaudeville, blackface minstrelsy, operetta, burlesque, ethnic theater, and other theatrical forms...

... that unfolded in the laws of slavery, medical discourses of race, pro- and antislavery political rhetoric, and popular culture like blackface minstrelsy and freak shows. The disabling images of blackness created in these various registers of American life resounded long after slavery’s end, gradually fading...