Author : William L. Slout
Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 10,61 MB
Release : 2007-09-01
Category :
ISBN : 089370458X
Includes the seminal "Early History of Negro Minstrelsy," by Col. T. Allston Brown, together with pen-and-ink portraits of the major minstrels, and a comprehensive index.
Author : Tim Brooks
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 50,78 MB
Release : 2019-11-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1476676763
The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past, it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world, where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form. This book traces the often overlooked history of the "modern" minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music, dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.
Author : Pettinger Alasdair Pettinger
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 397 pages
File Size : 17,69 MB
Release : 2018-11-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1474444288
The first full-length study of Frederick Douglass' visit to Scotland in 1846Frederick Douglass (1818-95) was not the only fugitive from American slavery to visit Scotland before the Civil War, but he was the best known and his impact was far-reaching. This book shows that addressing crowded halls from Ayr to Aberdeen, he gained the confidence, mastered the skills and fashioned the distinctive voice that transformed him as a campaigner. It tells how Douglass challenged the Free Church over its ties with the Southern plantocracy; how he exploited his knowledge of Walter Scott and Robert Burns to brilliant effect; and how he asserted control over his own image at a time when racial science and blackface minstrel shows were beginning to shape his audiences' perceptions. He arrived as a subordinate envoy of white abolitionists, legally still enslaved. He returned home as a free man ready to embark on a new stage of his career, as editor and proprietor of his own newspaper and a leader in his own right.Key Features:First full-length study of Frederick Douglass' visit to Scotland in 1846Reveals fresh information about, and deepens our understanding of, a major 19th-century intellectual at a crucial stage in his political and professional developmentSubjects Douglass' speeches and letters to close readings and situates them in the immediate context of their delivery and compositionDemonstrates the extent to which Douglass was closely acquainted with Scottish literature, history and current affairsEnhances our knowledge of Douglass as a performer, his ability to read audiences, and how he moved and influenced them
Author : Nathan W. Pearson
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 31,63 MB
Release : 1987
Category : Jazz
ISBN : 9780252064388
"A big juicy wedge of jazz history. . . . Lots of wonderful stories." -- Los Angeles Daily News "Kansas City was a hub for Jazz bands that crisscrossed the country in the 1930s. . . . The interviews go beyond jazz into the infamous political machinery that made Kansas City a wide-open and corrupt town where jazz could flourish." -- Choice "A wealth of stories, a good measure of entertainment and a valuable stab at history -- not to mention some great pictures." -- The Kansas City Star
Author : William L. Slout
Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 20,99 MB
Release : 2016-04-13
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1434437604
William L. Slout, entertainment historian par excellence, here provides five fascinating essays on the development of the American traveling circus in the post-Civil War era: "En Route to the Great Eastern Circus" (on the creation of this great show); "The Great Eastern Circus of 1872" (more details about one of P. T. Barnum's rivals); "The Not-So-Great Trans-Atlantic Circus and Menagerie" (how a show failed suddenly in a yellow fever epidemic); "What Goes Up...Comes Down" (how balloning became part of the circus environment); and "The Chicken or the Egg?" (on the first development of the double-ring act pioneered by Barnum and others). These vivid essays, highlighted by numerous contemporaneous excerpts from local newspapers, help bring a long-forgotten era alive again.
Author : William L. Slout
Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 33,33 MB
Release : 2012-02-07
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1434449386
William L. Slout, circus historian par excellence, here provides six essays on the development of the American circus. "From Rags to Ricketts: The Roots of Circus in Early Gotham" looks at the beginnings of circus entertainment in old New York City during the eighteenth century. "The Great Roman Hippodrome of 1874: P. T. Barnum's 'Crowning Effort'" describes the great showman's grand experiment: the collection and display in the Big Apple of the "largest collection of living wild animals in the world." "The Recycling of the Dan Rice Paris Pavilion Circus" tells the story of an American circus entrepreneur who took his traveling show to Europe in 1867. "Strange Bedfellows: The Pogey O'Brien Interval, 1874-1875" relates how O'Brien partnered with P. T. Barnum to take the circus master's show on the road while Barnum was creating his "Great Roman Hippodrome." "Two Rings and a Hippodrome Track" demonstrates that the first two-ring circus mounted by Barnum (or anyone else) occurred in 1873, and not 1872, as previously supposed. Finally, "The Adventures of James M. Nixon, Forgotten Impresario," describes the career of a major circus manager who worked between the 1843-75, directly competing with Barnum for the same audience--and eventually losing the struggle. Slout’s vivid accounts, highlighted by contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the excitement generated locally by these traveling shows, help bring a long-forgotten era alive again.
Author : Jen Wilson
Publisher : University of Wales Press
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 42,7 MB
Release : 2019-04-01
Category : History
ISBN : 178683409X
The stories within its pages will attract not only social and political historians, but feminists, jazz fans, academics interested in African American cultural interchange, and general readers fascinated by the cast of characters who played and danced to the music, despite warnings from the pulpit that degenerate youth were destined for hell and damnation. Freedom Music will enable readers to learn of an innovative side of Wales previously hidden from history. The music appealed to Wales’ vibrant youth, and those not part of the mainstream culture of chapels, choirs and male voice choirs. This study highlights gender, misogyny and discrimination within jazz music in Wales. This studies focuses on the history of African American music in Wales, Welsh women’s contribution to jazz in Wales. Cultural innovation by women entrepreneurs during and from the First World War.
Author : Jenifer L. Barclay
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 31,60 MB
Release : 2021-04-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0252052617
Exploring the disability history of slavery Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical, narratives used not only to defend slavery but argue against it. As she shows, this relationship between ableism and racism impacted racial identities during the antebellum period and played an overlooked role in shaping American history afterward. Barclay also illuminates the everyday lives of the ten percent of enslaved people who lived with disabilities. Devalued by slaveholders as unsound and therefore worthless, these individuals nonetheless carved out an unusual autonomy. Their roles as caregivers, healers, and keepers of memory made them esteemed within their own communities and celebrated figures in song and folklore. Prescient in its analysis and rich in detail, The Mark of Slavery is a powerful addition to the intertwined histories of disability, slavery, and race.
Author : Bradley Shope
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 14,62 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Music
ISBN : 158046548X
The first systematic study to address the character and scope of American popular music in India during British rule.
Author : Michael Burden
Publisher : LSU Press
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 10,90 MB
Release : 2020-10-21
Category : History
ISBN : 0807174459
The diary of Anton Reiff Jr. (c. 1830–1916) is one of only a handful of primary sources to offer a firsthand account of antebellum riverboat travel in the American South. The Pyne and Harrison Opera Troupe, a company run by English sisters Susan and Louisa Pyne and their business partner, tenor William Harrison, hired Reiff, then freelancing in New York, to serve as musical director and conductor for the company’s American itinerary. The grueling tour began in November 1855 in Boston and then proceeded to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, where, after a three-week engagement, the company boarded a paddle steamer bound for New Orleans. It was at that point that Reiff started to keep his diary. Diligently transcribed and annotated by Michael Burden, Reiff’s diary presents an extraordinarily rare view of life with a foreign opera company as it traveled the country by river and rail. Surprisingly, Reiff comments little on the Pyne-Harrison performances themselves, although he does visit the theaters in the river towns, including New Orleans, where he spends evenings both at the French Opera and at the Gaiety. Instead, Reiff focuses his attention on other passengers, on the mechanics of the journey, on the landscape, and on events he encounters, including the 1856 Mardi Gras and the unveiling of the statue of Andrew Jackson in New Orleans's Jackson Square. Reiff is clearly captivated by the river towns and their residents, including the enslaved, whom he encountered whenever the boat tied up. Running throughout the journal is a thread of anxiety, for, apart from the typical dangers of a river trip, the winter of 1855–1856 was one of the coldest of the century, and the steamer had difficulties with river ice. Historians have used Reiff’s journal as source material, but until now the entire text, which is archived in Louisiana State University’s Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library, has only been available in its original state. As a primary source, the published journal will have broad appeal to historians and other readers interested in antebellum riverboat travel, highbrow entertainment, and the people and places of the South.
