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Most recent posts
- – The blackface lumpenproletariat and American popular culture
- – African American Music – A survival or an actual creative force in today’s culture?
- – Christmas is when the greedy give to the needy
- – The blues, they are no art
- – How criticism helped the vaudeville: The spotlight on Franklin “Baby” Seals
- – Wagner, Beethoven & Negro Folksongs, and … baseball
- – The Whitman Sisters: why we may never silence them.
- – Catfish & Cotton & Caffeine
- – Marketing Patent Medicine Folk and Blues
- – Blues from the circus tent
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Category Archives: Minstrelsy
– The blackface lumpenproletariat and American popular culture
PDF-version here ___________________ In a previous essay on African-American music[i], I subscribed to the thesis that its study is most fruitful when it is seen as a dynamic cultural evolution resulting from the complex interaction between the black and white populations. African-American music is not a survival that erodes over time, but a generative force […]
Posted in - Pre Blues era, Minstrelsy
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– Marketing Patent Medicine Folk and Blues
Acknowledgements I am grateful to Willem van Dullemen, who in his passion for folk (music) helped me in getting at my disposal part of the reading material. I also owe a great deal to watching the documentary “Free Show Tonight” produced, in 1983, by Paul Wagner, Steven J. Zeitlin, and Barr Weissman. It is a […]
Posted in - Blues history, - Pre Blues era, Minstrelsy, Vaudeville
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– Blues from the circus tent
Acknowledgements The credits for the essay below go completely to Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff whose invaluable research in the historical archives have permitted to unearth the role of the circus side show in the spread of the popular music (Ragged but Right, 2007) ________________________________ The circus brings to mind feelings of joy, laughter and […]
Posted in - Blues history, - Pre Blues era, Minstrelsy, Vaudeville
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– Jim Crow and black music: from cheerful stable boy to despised symbol of institutionalized racism
Do you have a spare minute for me, yes? I would like to tell you briefly the tragic story of a poor black stableboy who happily jumped through life but ended up, against his own will, to be an icon of structural and institutionalized racism, up until today. Once upon a time in America, around […]
Posted in - Pre Blues era, Minstrelsy
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– The Irish African and the African Irishman
Abstract: It is commonly said that black face minstrelsy is the first popular-professional musical business in America. I am only at the beginning of grasping its full impact on later music evolution as the blues. But before starting this exercise it is essential to understand that black face minstrelsy was not a one dimensional phenomenon. […]
Posted in - Pre Blues era, Minstrelsy
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