Discovering Blackface Minstrelsy Analysis
Discovering Blackface Minstrelsy and its Relation to Music Today
Jocelyn Labombarde
Word Count: 1,996
9/19/2013
When I first came into this class, I knew very little about blackface minstrelsy beyond the basic concept that it included white men blackening their faces and putting on shows to mock African Americans. I had heard of Stephen Foster and some of the more famous minstrel composers and knew the general time period in which minstrelsy was common. Much of what I learned about blackface minstrelsy in class surprised me and differed from the ideas I had of blackface was. I didn’t realize the wide variety of black stereotypes portrayed, that blacks performed in the shows as well, and just how …show more content…
popular minstrelsy was at the time. It had never occurred to me that upper-class white people enjoyed putting on blackface because it allowed them to say things they normally wouldn’t such as political opinions. As I read more into the details behind blackface minstrelsy, I was able to relate parts of it to contemporary music, particularly how the caricatures are meant to stereotype certain types of people and races in society. Most of what I know about society and racism during the nineteenth century is related to the Civil Rights movement, but studying blackface minstrelsy and music during that time has given me a greater understanding of how society was structured then and caused me to evaluate more of the entertainment people listen to nowadays. Due to my limited knowledge of blackface minstrelsy going into this class, there were many details of minstrelsy that differed from my expectations, the most shocking of which was that black people participated in these shows.
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 …show more content…
manner. Another fact that surprised me about minstrelsy is that it was once the most popular form of entertainment. Most people in my generation have at least heard of vaudeville and other popular entertainment in history, but so few people in this generation have heard of blackface minstrelsy, making it difficult to think of it as being so popular. Not only was it the most popular form of entertainment, but its popularity was dominant in the north and the center of blackface entertainment was New York City. This seemed strange to me since the people in the north were generally against slavery and the cruel treatment of blacks. It is reported that Abraham Lincoln, an adamant abolitionist, loved blackface minstrelsy. I had expected blackface minstrelsy to be more popular in the south since that is where the majority of slavery and hatred towards African Americans occurred. When I imagine actors imitating blacks, I picture them portraying one universal stereotype of black people, but minstrelsy shows included a wide variety of stereotyped characters. The most popular of these caricatures were Jim Crow and Zip Coon. The first main minstrel character was “Jim Crow” who was always portrayed as a happy-go-lucky plantation hand whose blind arrogance made him a buffoon. The “Zip Coon” character was also boastful, wearing fancy clothes and his “long tail blue” jacket. Zip Coon brought romance to the minstrel stage but he was too full of himself to be in a serious romance. Other common minstrel characters included Jezebel who was a temptress and Buck who was a perverted black man interested in white women. Not only were there more types of character personas than I expected, there was also cross dressing in minstrelsy. The character Mammy was usually a man dressed in drag playing the bossy wife. Miss Lucy from the comic love song, “Miss Lucy Long” would have also typically impersonated by a man. I was surprised as well that not all of the black characters were shown as being savage and uneducated, but some were actually typified as cunning and smart.
Between the 1840s and 1850s, the minstrel personas evolved to portray an unrealistic image of blacks as being happy working as slaves and “fondly recalling the good old days on the plantation.”1 The fact that this was an accepted view of slave life surprised me a lot.
I didn’t see how anyone living during that time could possibly believe that slaves were content with their work. By the 1850s, the main theme behind minstrel shows was that the plantation was the blacks’ rightful home and the only place they could be truly happy and cared for. Reading this confused me because the majority of slaves were anything but cared for. They worked long hours, were fed poorly, slept crowded on the floor, and were subject to brutality on a daily basis. Matthew Shaftel quotes writer Herbert Holl’s summary of this unrealistic picture of slave life in minstrel shows that “Northerners imagined an idealized landscape combined with relaxation, simple, rustic pleasures and the nobility of honest, rewarding labor; all culminating in an enviable and glorified lifestyle. Slave life was actually seen as an ideal one, by viewing the slave as an uncomplicated, child-like creature, happy and lovable, enjoying life’s simple pleasures while reaping the satisfactions of honest toil for a beloved ‘Massa,’ whose kindness swept away all sorrow and care.”2 It seemed as if society was trying to avoid facing the reality of how wrongly blacks were being treated. A minstrel show by Christy and Wood used the book
Uncle Tom’s Cabin about the cruelty of slavery and remade it into a show called “Life among the Happy” filled with blacks dancing and singing cheerfully and leaving out all parts about the suffering endured by these slaves. How did these people manage to turn such a blind eye to the injustice and harshness of slavery and try to make it ok? Did society actually believe that slaves enjoyed being slaves? Either way the happy songs and characters and images in minstrelsy left me dumbfounded.
What I found most curious about blackface minstrelsy is the idea that white people put on blackface as a way of escaping from social mores and allowing themselves to say and do things they wouldn’t normally. It makes sense in a way, the idea had just never occurred to me until reading about it. While pretending to be a black person, performers were able to comment on politics, culture, and social class without worrying about being impolite. Indeed, “Minstrelsy set the tone for ‘black’ performance as a ‘guilty pleasure,’ an act of transgression against established social mores for an expanding white middle class with anxiety about upper mobility and distinguishing themselves from those lower on the social ladder.”3 Because of this notion of being freed, the subject matter of minstrelsy was less about whites’ views on African Americans and mostly about whites’ responses to the conditions of their own lives.
There are numerous parallels that can be drawn between blackface minstrelsy and today’s popular music. The manner in which the performers let themselves behave freely and do crazy acts during a performance is similar to rock musicians today. In 1846 an English observer referred to minstrels as being “animated by a savage energy, their white eyes rolling in a curious frenzy.”4 This was their way of mimicking the “ceaseless, violent exertions of frenetic dancing”5 that the black slaves were known to do. The music of today’s rock musicians is often violent and crazy as well. The artists commonly wear dark makeup, as seen in bands such as Green Day or Kiss, and dark clothes. They shake their bodies wildly while performing, especially when a guitarist does a solo he often gets down on his knees and thrashes his head about. The lyrics in rock songs such as Van Halen “Don’t Tell Me” have similar lyrics: It 's ok, I 'll do what I want. If I choose, I can take the fall. There 's a choice, it 's my destiny in my hands, yeah it 's up to me I can drive I can shoot a gun in the streets. Both genres of music are about the spirit of letting oneself go without regards for social approval and having that savage energy.
Racism and stereotypes is another common theme found in blackface minstrelsy and music now, especially rap and hip hop. The extensive amount of profanity, sexism and racism found in these genres of music are no better than that of blackface minstrelsy and I find it disturbing how so many people now, mostly teens, are accepting of the vulgar images in rap and hip hop music yet consider blackface and other forms of discrimination offensive. Pop music expert, Robert Christgau explains this perpetuation of racism that “The basic legend about the origin of minstrelsy tells a story about the white-from-black appropriation not just of minstrelsy but of all American popular music.”6 Rap and hip hop are dominated by black artists who are thought of as gangsters. The music wrongly creates the illusion that all blacks are ghetto trash, stealing things, doing drugs, shooting people on the streets, and degrading women to sex objects. The artist Dead Prez has an album called “Revolutionary but Gangsta” and one of their songs contains the verse: “We gonna order take out and when we see the driver. We gonna stick the 25 up in his face. White boy in the wrong place at the right time. Soon as the car door open up he mine. We roll up quick and put the pistol to his nose. By the look on his face he probably s*** in his clothes. You know what this is, it 's a stick up. Gimme the do ' from your pickups. You ran into the wrong niggaz.” Nearly all the lyrics are focused around sex, drugs and violence, and music, videos which have become popular among this generation, only further these racial stereotypes. Just as blackface portrayed African Americans as being content as slaves, rap and hip hop songs glamorize the “thug life.” Music is a reflection of society’s perspectives on life and since racism in society is not likely to ever perish, it will be reflected in music such as minstrelsy, rap and hip hop.
Learning about blackface minstrelsy has been an interesting experience for me since much of the material I discovered was contradictory to my original notions of blackface. I was most surprised to learn that African Americans participated in these shows as well, mocking their own culture. Characters in minstrel shows acted out a variety of stereotypes, not just the universal black stereotype I had in mind. The use of blackface by whites to free themselves from social mores is an aspect of blackface I thought interesting that had never occurred to me previously. I also would not have guessed that blackface minstrelsy was at one time the most common form of entertainment since it is not at all well known today but if one listens to current popular music or genres such as jazz and blues, traces of minstrel themes can still be heard. The racism and negative stereotypes of African Americans portrayed in blackface minstrelsy remain in music today, particularly in rap and hip hop. As music analyst, Barry Shank, puts it, “there is no escaping the legacy of blackface minstrelsy in American popular music.”7
Bibliography
Brown, Lee. "Can American Popular Vocal Music Escape the Legacy of Blackface
Minstrelsy?." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 1 (2013): 91-100. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01545.x/full (accessed September 21, 2013).
Crawford, Richard, and Larry Hamberlin. An introduction to America 's music. Second ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company), 2013.
Ramsey, Guthrie. "African American Music." Oxford Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2226838?type=article&search=quick&q=blackface+minstrelsy&pos=6&_start=1#firsthit (accessed September 21, 2013).
Shaftel, Matthew. "Singing a New Song: Stephen Foster and the New American
Minstrelsy." Music & Politics 1, no. 2 (2007): all.
Winans, Robert, Liner Notes. The Early Minstrel Show. Robert Winans (director). New World
Records 80338. 1998, compact disc.
Jocelyn Labombarde
Word Count: 1,996
9/19/2013
When I first came into this class, I knew very little about blackface minstrelsy beyond the basic concept that it included white men blackening their faces and putting on shows to mock African Americans. I had heard of Stephen Foster and some of the more famous minstrel composers and knew the general time period in which minstrelsy was common. Much of what I learned about blackface minstrelsy in class surprised me and differed from the ideas I had of blackface was. I didn’t realize the wide variety of black stereotypes portrayed, that blacks performed in the shows as well, and just how …show more content…
popular minstrelsy was at the time. It had never occurred to me that upper-class white people enjoyed putting on blackface because it allowed them to say things they normally wouldn’t such as political opinions. As I read more into the details behind blackface minstrelsy, I was able to relate parts of it to contemporary music, particularly how the caricatures are meant to stereotype certain types of people and races in society. Most of what I know about society and racism during the nineteenth century is related to the Civil Rights movement, but studying blackface minstrelsy and music during that time has given me a greater understanding of how society was structured then and caused me to evaluate more of the entertainment people listen to nowadays. Due to my limited knowledge of blackface minstrelsy going into this class, there were many details of minstrelsy that differed from my expectations, the most shocking of which was that black people participated in these shows.
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 …show more content…
manner. Another fact that surprised me about minstrelsy is that it was once the most popular form of entertainment. Most people in my generation have at least heard of vaudeville and other popular entertainment in history, but so few people in this generation have heard of blackface minstrelsy, making it difficult to think of it as being so popular. Not only was it the most popular form of entertainment, but its popularity was dominant in the north and the center of blackface entertainment was New York City. This seemed strange to me since the people in the north were generally against slavery and the cruel treatment of blacks. It is reported that Abraham Lincoln, an adamant abolitionist, loved blackface minstrelsy. I had expected blackface minstrelsy to be more popular in the south since that is where the majority of slavery and hatred towards African Americans occurred. When I imagine actors imitating blacks, I picture them portraying one universal stereotype of black people, but minstrelsy shows included a wide variety of stereotyped characters. The most popular of these caricatures were Jim Crow and Zip Coon. The first main minstrel character was “Jim Crow” who was always portrayed as a happy-go-lucky plantation hand whose blind arrogance made him a buffoon. The “Zip Coon” character was also boastful, wearing fancy clothes and his “long tail blue” jacket. Zip Coon brought romance to the minstrel stage but he was too full of himself to be in a serious romance. Other common minstrel characters included Jezebel who was a temptress and Buck who was a perverted black man interested in white women. Not only were there more types of character personas than I expected, there was also cross dressing in minstrelsy. The character Mammy was usually a man dressed in drag playing the bossy wife. Miss Lucy from the comic love song, “Miss Lucy Long” would have also typically impersonated by a man. I was surprised as well that not all of the black characters were shown as being savage and uneducated, but some were actually typified as cunning and smart.
Between the 1840s and 1850s, the minstrel personas evolved to portray an unrealistic image of blacks as being happy working as slaves and “fondly recalling the good old days on the plantation.”1 The fact that this was an accepted view of slave life surprised me a lot.
I didn’t see how anyone living during that time could possibly believe that slaves were content with their work. By the 1850s, the main theme behind minstrel shows was that the plantation was the blacks’ rightful home and the only place they could be truly happy and cared for. Reading this confused me because the majority of slaves were anything but cared for. They worked long hours, were fed poorly, slept crowded on the floor, and were subject to brutality on a daily basis. Matthew Shaftel quotes writer Herbert Holl’s summary of this unrealistic picture of slave life in minstrel shows that “Northerners imagined an idealized landscape combined with relaxation, simple, rustic pleasures and the nobility of honest, rewarding labor; all culminating in an enviable and glorified lifestyle. Slave life was actually seen as an ideal one, by viewing the slave as an uncomplicated, child-like creature, happy and lovable, enjoying life’s simple pleasures while reaping the satisfactions of honest toil for a beloved ‘Massa,’ whose kindness swept away all sorrow and care.”2 It seemed as if society was trying to avoid facing the reality of how wrongly blacks were being treated. A minstrel show by Christy and Wood used the book
Uncle Tom’s Cabin about the cruelty of slavery and remade it into a show called “Life among the Happy” filled with blacks dancing and singing cheerfully and leaving out all parts about the suffering endured by these slaves. How did these people manage to turn such a blind eye to the injustice and harshness of slavery and try to make it ok? Did society actually believe that slaves enjoyed being slaves? Either way the happy songs and characters and images in minstrelsy left me dumbfounded.
What I found most curious about blackface minstrelsy is the idea that white people put on blackface as a way of escaping from social mores and allowing themselves to say and do things they wouldn’t normally. It makes sense in a way, the idea had just never occurred to me until reading about it. While pretending to be a black person, performers were able to comment on politics, culture, and social class without worrying about being impolite. Indeed, “Minstrelsy set the tone for ‘black’ performance as a ‘guilty pleasure,’ an act of transgression against established social mores for an expanding white middle class with anxiety about upper mobility and distinguishing themselves from those lower on the social ladder.”3 Because of this notion of being freed, the subject matter of minstrelsy was less about whites’ views on African Americans and mostly about whites’ responses to the conditions of their own lives.
There are numerous parallels that can be drawn between blackface minstrelsy and today’s popular music. The manner in which the performers let themselves behave freely and do crazy acts during a performance is similar to rock musicians today. In 1846 an English observer referred to minstrels as being “animated by a savage energy, their white eyes rolling in a curious frenzy.”4 This was their way of mimicking the “ceaseless, violent exertions of frenetic dancing”5 that the black slaves were known to do. The music of today’s rock musicians is often violent and crazy as well. The artists commonly wear dark makeup, as seen in bands such as Green Day or Kiss, and dark clothes. They shake their bodies wildly while performing, especially when a guitarist does a solo he often gets down on his knees and thrashes his head about. The lyrics in rock songs such as Van Halen “Don’t Tell Me” have similar lyrics: It 's ok, I 'll do what I want. If I choose, I can take the fall. There 's a choice, it 's my destiny in my hands, yeah it 's up to me I can drive I can shoot a gun in the streets. Both genres of music are about the spirit of letting oneself go without regards for social approval and having that savage energy.
Racism and stereotypes is another common theme found in blackface minstrelsy and music now, especially rap and hip hop. The extensive amount of profanity, sexism and racism found in these genres of music are no better than that of blackface minstrelsy and I find it disturbing how so many people now, mostly teens, are accepting of the vulgar images in rap and hip hop music yet consider blackface and other forms of discrimination offensive. Pop music expert, Robert Christgau explains this perpetuation of racism that “The basic legend about the origin of minstrelsy tells a story about the white-from-black appropriation not just of minstrelsy but of all American popular music.”6 Rap and hip hop are dominated by black artists who are thought of as gangsters. The music wrongly creates the illusion that all blacks are ghetto trash, stealing things, doing drugs, shooting people on the streets, and degrading women to sex objects. The artist Dead Prez has an album called “Revolutionary but Gangsta” and one of their songs contains the verse: “We gonna order take out and when we see the driver. We gonna stick the 25 up in his face. White boy in the wrong place at the right time. Soon as the car door open up he mine. We roll up quick and put the pistol to his nose. By the look on his face he probably s*** in his clothes. You know what this is, it 's a stick up. Gimme the do ' from your pickups. You ran into the wrong niggaz.” Nearly all the lyrics are focused around sex, drugs and violence, and music, videos which have become popular among this generation, only further these racial stereotypes. Just as blackface portrayed African Americans as being content as slaves, rap and hip hop songs glamorize the “thug life.” Music is a reflection of society’s perspectives on life and since racism in society is not likely to ever perish, it will be reflected in music such as minstrelsy, rap and hip hop.
Learning about blackface minstrelsy has been an interesting experience for me since much of the material I discovered was contradictory to my original notions of blackface. I was most surprised to learn that African Americans participated in these shows as well, mocking their own culture. Characters in minstrel shows acted out a variety of stereotypes, not just the universal black stereotype I had in mind. The use of blackface by whites to free themselves from social mores is an aspect of blackface I thought interesting that had never occurred to me previously. I also would not have guessed that blackface minstrelsy was at one time the most common form of entertainment since it is not at all well known today but if one listens to current popular music or genres such as jazz and blues, traces of minstrel themes can still be heard. The racism and negative stereotypes of African Americans portrayed in blackface minstrelsy remain in music today, particularly in rap and hip hop. As music analyst, Barry Shank, puts it, “there is no escaping the legacy of blackface minstrelsy in American popular music.”7
Bibliography
Brown, Lee. "Can American Popular Vocal Music Escape the Legacy of Blackface
Minstrelsy?." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 1 (2013): 91-100. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01545.x/full (accessed September 21, 2013).
Crawford, Richard, and Larry Hamberlin. An introduction to America 's music. Second ed. (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company), 2013.
Ramsey, Guthrie. "African American Music." Oxford Music Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2226838?type=article&search=quick&q=blackface+minstrelsy&pos=6&_start=1#firsthit (accessed September 21, 2013).
Shaftel, Matthew. "Singing a New Song: Stephen Foster and the New American
Minstrelsy." Music & Politics 1, no. 2 (2007): all.
Winans, Robert, Liner Notes. The Early Minstrel Show. Robert Winans (director). New World
Records 80338. 1998, compact disc.