Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The songs, dances, jokes, parodies, spoofs, and skits of blackface groups
such as the Virginia Minstrels and Buckley's Serenaders became wildly
popular in antebellum America. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask not only
explores the racist practices of these entertainers but considers their
performances as troubled representations of ethnicity, class, gender,
and culture in the nineteenth century.
William J. Mahar's unprecedented archival study of playbills, newspapers,
sketches, monologues, and music engages new sources previously not considered
in twentieth-century scholarship. More than any other study of its kind,
Behind the Burnt Cork Mask investigates the relationships between
blackface comedy and other Western genres and traditions; between the
music of minstrel shows and its European sources; and between "popular"
and "elite" constructions of culture.
By locating minstrel performances within their complex sites of production,
Mahar offers a significant reassessment of the historiography of the field.
Behind the Burnt Cork Mask promises to redefine the study of blackface
minstrelsy, charting new directions for future inquiries by scholars in
American studies, popular culture, and musicology.
Synopsis
The songs, dances, jokes, parodies, spoofs, and skits of blackface groups such as the Virginia Minstrels and Buckley's Serenaders became wildly popular in antebellum America. Drawing on an unprecedented archival study of playbills, newspapers, sketches, monologues, and music, William J. Mahar explores the racist practices of minstrel entertainers and considers their performances as troubled representations of ethnicity, class, gender, and culture in the nineteenth century.
Mahar investigates the relationships between blackface comedy and other Western genres and traditions; between the music of minstrel shows and its European sources; and between "popular" and "elite" constructions of culture. Locating minstrel performances within their complex sites of production, Mahar reassesses the historiography of the field.
Table of Contents
List of musical examples -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Revisiting minstrelsy's history: the playbill and contextual -- Evidence -- Blackface parodies of American speech and rhetoric: burlesque -- Lectures and sermons, political orations, comic dialogues and stories -- Opera for the masses: burlesques of English and Italian opera -- Ethiopian sketches of American life: skits, farces, and afterpieces -- Vocal and choral repertories of blackface minstrelsy -- Minstrelsy, masculinity, and social rituals -- Vocal and choral repertories of blackface minstrelsy -- Blackface minstrelsy and misogyny -- Finale -- Appendixes -- Rosters of Antebellum minstrel companies -- Representative finales from selected minstrel shows -- Song text frequency in selected Antebellum songsters -- Notes -- Works cited -- Index.