John Fredrick Parker
Donor
I was skimming through With Amusement For All the other day, reading the section on the Minstrel Show (during its pre-ACW heyday). What struck me about Ashby's description of the genre and its history is the similarities, both in (what this author considered) its appeal and in its controversies, to what we saw later with Jazz, Hip Hop, and numerous other musical genres:
1) it was rooted in black folk music
2) it was appropriated ("stolen" has been used often here) at a mass level, mainly, if not(?) entirely, for working class white audiences, who derived pleasure from letting loose and, at a subconscious level, "feeling black" (patrons of the genre at the time were called "negro white men") -- I can't help but think of Jazz and Rock and Roll there
3) a generally working class and populist social message (loosely defined) -- Ashby does a great job highlighting the anti-authority (be they bankers, Politicians, managers, or "dandies") that Jim Crow stood up to, much to the amusement of the rowdy audiences
4) it was, and to this day, was criticized for confirming black stereotypes and celebrating sloth and non-sobriety -- similar to how DuBois felt about Jazz, and Hip Hop was long considered to be (some, like Spike Lee in Bamboozled, made the comparison explicit)
Despite these similarities, where Jazz, Rock and Roll, Hip Hop, and just about all her music, went on to become influential and honorable parts of America's heritage and pop culture history, Minstrel Shows... well, in the end, they did not.
So where did the Minstrel Show go wrong, where the more honorable genres of American music went right? Put another way, is there a way without, in any way, curbing African American Civil Rights or general social equality of the present -- in fact, stronger here would be better -- for Minstrel Shows to evolve in such a way that they are (again, with present levels of racial progress) to be held in the same esteem as Jazz and Hip Hop are OTL?
1) it was rooted in black folk music
2) it was appropriated ("stolen" has been used often here) at a mass level, mainly, if not(?) entirely, for working class white audiences, who derived pleasure from letting loose and, at a subconscious level, "feeling black" (patrons of the genre at the time were called "negro white men") -- I can't help but think of Jazz and Rock and Roll there
3) a generally working class and populist social message (loosely defined) -- Ashby does a great job highlighting the anti-authority (be they bankers, Politicians, managers, or "dandies") that Jim Crow stood up to, much to the amusement of the rowdy audiences
4) it was, and to this day, was criticized for confirming black stereotypes and celebrating sloth and non-sobriety -- similar to how DuBois felt about Jazz, and Hip Hop was long considered to be (some, like Spike Lee in Bamboozled, made the comparison explicit)
Despite these similarities, where Jazz, Rock and Roll, Hip Hop, and just about all her music, went on to become influential and honorable parts of America's heritage and pop culture history, Minstrel Shows... well, in the end, they did not.
So where did the Minstrel Show go wrong, where the more honorable genres of American music went right? Put another way, is there a way without, in any way, curbing African American Civil Rights or general social equality of the present -- in fact, stronger here would be better -- for Minstrel Shows to evolve in such a way that they are (again, with present levels of racial progress) to be held in the same esteem as Jazz and Hip Hop are OTL?
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