scholarly journals ‘The Minstrels Parade’: Blackface minstrelsy and the music hall

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
David Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
Music Hall

John Bull in blackface

Popular Music ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Cotton Plantations

For a mid-twentieth century historian of the music hall, blackface minstrelsy was the ‘oddest form of entertainment imaginable’. He found it ‘incomprehensible’ why people during the Victorian period had delighted in the ‘extraordinary spectacle of the apparently sane white man blacking his face and hands with burnt cork, painting his lips and eyes to resemble those of an African nigger, and then, to complete the incongruity, attiring himself in English evening dress while he sang ditties allegedly emanating from the cotton plantations of Ole Virginny!’ (Felstead 1946, p. 55). There are a number of things to be said about this evaluation, the first being that its severe disparagement of one of the most popular cultural forms of the Victorian period in Britain was, during that period, exceptionally rare. Indeed, the lack of criticism attests to its enduring popularity. From their first wave of success in the late 1830s and early 1840s, minstrel acts, troupes and shows figured as a staple item of the popular stage throughout the remaining decades of the century. What began with its early boom in the second quarter of the century continued to prove attractive to successive generations across all social classes, and among men and women of the large urban centres, provincial towns and outlying rural areas alike.

scholarly journals Male Impersonation in the Music Hall: the Case of Vesta Tilley

1988 ◽  
Vol 4 (15) ◽  
pp. 247-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Aston
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
Male Impersonation

Music hall has only recently been treated to ‘serious’ as distinct from anecdotal study, and the ‘turns’ of its leading performers remain largely unexplored. Particularly revealing, perhaps, are the acts of the male impersonators – whose ancestry in ‘legit’ performance had been a long one, yet whose particular approach to cross-dressing had a special social and sexual significance during the ascendancy of music hall, with its curious mixture of working-class directness, commercial knowingness, and ‘pre-Freudian innocence’. The most successful of the male impersonators was Vesta Tilley, whose various disguises, the nature of their hidden appeal, and the ‘messages’ they delivered are here analyzed by Elaine Aston.

Fashion and the White Savage in the Parisian Music Hall

2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Beth Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Music Hall

scholarly journals Jazz and Music-Hall Transgressions in Theatre Workshop's Production of A Taste of Honey

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-336
Author(s):  
Alec Patton
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
The Right ◽  
Original Production ◽  
The University

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey in the Theatre Workshop production of 1959 opened to the sound of a fast twelve-bar blues played on trumpet, saxophone, and guitar by musicians sitting in a box to the right of the stage. Though rarely mentioned by historians, the ‘Apex Jazz Trio’, as they were called, were a lively and unpredictable element in the production. Between the actors' open acknowledgement of the band, and Avis Bunnage's direct comments to the audience, the play shattered the ’realistic‘ conventions that still held sway in the West End, at the same time transgressing the distinction between ‘serious’ theatre and music hall (where the boundary of the proscenium was never respected obsequiously). Alec Patton, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, draws on original interviews with actors from the cast, a member of the first-night audience, and the leader of the band that accompanied the show to offer a re-assessment of the role of music and music hall in the original production of A Taste of Honey.

Blackface Minstrelsy and the Reception of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-320
Author(s):  
Julia J. Chybowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Black Swan ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis article explores blackface minstrelsy in the context of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's singing career of the 1850s–1870s. Although Greenfield performed a version of African American musicality that was distinct from minstrel caricatures, minstrelsy nonetheless impacted her reception. The ubiquity of minstrel tropes greatly influenced audience perceptions of Greenfield's creative and powerful transgressions of expected race and gender roles, as well as the alignment of race with mid-nineteenth-century notions of social class. Minstrel caricatures and stereotypes appeared in both praise and ridicule of Greenfield's performances from her debut onward, and after successful US and transatlantic tours established her notoriety, minstrel companies actually began staging parody versions of Greenfield, using her sobriquet, “Black Swan.” These “Black Swan” acts are evidence that Greenfield's achievements were perceived as threats to established social hierarchies.

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