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Topic: The Virginia Minstrels

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Minstrel show

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	Minstrelsy
		Although fl minstrel companies were largely trapped by the stereotypes of white minstrelsy, they nonetheless provided an important showcase for fl performing talent and served as a springboard for fl participation in the twentieth-century entertainment industry.
		The notion of a minstrel troupe emerged as a response to a severe depression that began in 1837, an economic downturn that continued into the early 1840s and hit theatrical performers particularly hard.
		The Virginia Minstrels, from their first performance in 1843, were a sensation and within a year had begun a well-received tour of England.
	archive.blackvoices.com /research/encarta/tt_200.asp (2568 words)

	Minstrel show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The term "minstrel" had previously been reserved for traveling white singing groups, but Emmett and company made it synonymous with flface performance, and by using it, signalled that they were reaching out to a new, middle-class audience.
		Other significant differences were that the fl minstrels added religious themes to their shows while whites shied from them, and that the fl companies commonly ended the first act of the show with a military high-stepping, brass band burlesque, a practice adopted after Callender's Minstrels used it in 1875 or 1876.
		Minstrel dance was generally not held to the same mockery as other parts, though contemporaries such as Fanny Kemble argued that minstrel dance was merely a "faint, feeble, impotent— in a word, pale Northern reproductions of that ineffable fl conception."
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Minstrel_show (7537 words)

	Dr. Horsehair - The Banjo, Our American Heritage - banjo history
		During the first minstrel shows with Dan Emmett on fiddle and Billy Whitlock on banjo, as well as the shows put on by Joel Sweeney and his brother Sam, the audiences of minstrel music were introduced to the sound of the fiddle and the banjo together as a complimentary duo.
		The minstrel show, playing the popular music of the day, continued to be the biggest influence on the popularity of the banjo, not only in the West, but in the entire nation, as well as England and Australia.
		Minstrel bands were referred to as "Negro Minstrels", or "Darkey Bands", because they "fled-up" their faces with burnt cork to appear as Negros.
	www.drhorsehair.com /history.html (4306 words)

	MINSTRELSY : MusicWeb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		There were fl minstrels, such as William Henry Lane (c 1825--52, aka Master Juba, one of the few to tour with a white company), but the majority were white until after the Civil War; fls as well as whites were required to 'fl up'.
		The full-length minstrel show was a formalized entertainment devised by astonishingly successful quartets: the Virginia Minstrels (1843) incl.
		Although conditions were terrible for fl performers and a full-time first-class fl minstrel troupe was not organized until 1865 (Brooker and Clayton's Georgia Minstrels), by the 1880s fl talent was in demand and a great many performers obtained valuable experience.
	www.musicweb-international.com /encyclopaedia/m/M206.HTM (783 words)

	Program Template (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Other minstrels were active in political and social causes, singing against slavery, supporting women in their struggle to vote, and against the use of alcohol.
		Minstrels were prominent on Broadway and they were evolving into what would be called vaudeville, and dropped the earlier traditional minstrel style.
		The minstrel song had come a long way from its beginning style lyrics which were more sentimental in nature (ex: Foster’s lyrics), and now were more racial in nature, making fun of the emphasized (in extreme) character of what was conceived of the Negro race.
	www.basinstreet.com /Programs/TheMinstrelShow (2800 words)

	Dr. Horsehair - What is minstrel music?
		Minstrel music was established in the late 1830s with the development of the five-string banjo by Joel Sweeney of Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
		The banjo was the foundation of the minstrel show, and was always played with the back of the fingernail in the "stroke" or "banjo" style.
		Dressed in authentic costume of the old minstrels (without fl face), they perform minstrel and old-time string band music in bluegrass festivals, folk festivals, concerts, and corporate functions around the country, as well as the 1996 Olympics.
	www.drhorsehair.com /minstrel.html (557 words)

	Printer Friendly Version - Happy banjo tunes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The Virginia Minstrels would be instrumental in changing that — and with remarkable speed, considering they lived in an age long before mass communication.
		The amphitheater show, played while the Virginia Minstrels were still a work in progress, caught the city by surprise.
		One favorite of the Minstrels, delivered by Whitlock, was "A Negro Lecture on Locomotives." The third act, which gradually became more prominent, would be a short play, often set on a plantation where all the slaves were almost deliriously joyful about their lot in life.
	www.nydailynews.com /city_life/big_town/v-pfriendly/story/197701p-170728c.html (810 words)

	Virginia Minstrels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The Virginia Minstrels was a group of 19th Century American entertainers known for helping to invent the entertainment form known as the minstrel show.
		Shortly after their formation, the group premiered at the old Chatham Square Theatre in New York City on February 17, 1843 with what is generally considered the first full-length flface minstrel show.
		Unlike earlier flface acts, the entire group appeared in flface and costume, not just a featured singer or dancer; also unlike earlier flface stage acts, their performance was structured as an entire evening's entertainment.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Virginia_Minstrels (180 words)

	Daniel Decatur Emmett
		In the winter of 1842-43, four stars of the minstrel profession formed a novel ensemble, consisting of the fiddle, bones, banjo, and tambourine.
		Calling themselves the "Original Virginia Minstrels," the four men, Dan Emmett on the fiddle, Frank Brower on the bones, Billy Whitlock on the banjo, and Dick Pelham on the tambourine, first performed in public at the Bowery Amphitheater on February 6, 1843, in New York.
		Wearing ill-assorted garments, oddly shaped hats, and gaudy pants and shirts, the four Virginia Minstrels were an often rowdy, fun-loving group.
	www.danemmett.org (673 words)

	AllRefer.com - minstrel show (Theater) - Encyclopedia
		In the first part of the minstrel show the company, in flface and gaudy costumes, paraded to chairs placed in a semicircle on the stage.
		The interlocutor then cracked jokes with the end men, and, for a finale, the company passed in review in the "walk around." This part of the minstrel show caricatured the fl man, representing him by grotesque stereotypes that were retained in the minds of white American audiences for many decades.
		The minstrel show was at its peak from 1850 to 1870 but passed with the coming of vaudeville, motion pictures, and radio.
	reference.allrefer.com /encyclopedia/M/minstshw.html (327 words)

	Banjo (Pt.1)
		Minstrel theatre remained the most popular form of entertainment in America through most of the 19th century.
		Joel Walker Sweeney, a white musician born about 1810 in eastern Virginia, is thought to have given banjo lessons in 1838 to Billy Whitlock, who later became the banjo player for the Virginia Minstrels.
		When they arrived in Virginia, Africans joined a society which was divided between master and white servant: a society with such contempt for white servants that masters were not punished for beating them to death...
	kentuckyexplorer.com /nonmembers/01-01023.html (2519 words)

	Minstrel shows
		To the twanging thwang of the banjo, and the clatter of tambo and bones – tambourine and bone castanets – white men smeared burnt cork on their faces to sing, waggle their legs in imitation of fls dancing, and tell jokes in "negro" dialect.
		The minstrels, in their wide-eyed, large-lipped, ragged-costumed absurdity, rolled onto the stage in a thundercloud of energy which hardly ever dissipated.
		Though antebellum (minstrel) troupes were white, the form developed in a form of racial collaboration, illustrating the axiom that defines – and continues to define – American music as it developed over the next century and a half : African American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic fl ones.
	www.musicals101.com /minstrel.htm (1153 words)

	Dixie
		Minstrel shows were almost the only outlet for pre-Civil War songwriters, who included among their number the talented Stephen Foster.
		In the winter of 1842-43, Emmett organized a troupe that he called the "Virginia Minstrels." Dressed in white trousers, striped shirts and swallowtail coats, they made a uniquely American sound, with violins, banjos, tambourines and "bones".
		The Virginia Minstrels opened at New York City's Bowery Theater in 1843 and, in the words of one critic, "firmly fixed themselves" among the best minstrel groups.
	jjoakley.com /dixie.html (871 words)

	American Experience \| Stephen Foster \| People & Events
		Although he was not, as he claimed, the leader of the first flface minstrel troupe, he indisputably led one of the most renowned.
		Christy shrewdly toned down the racier aspects of the traditional minstrel show, eliminating songs with references to sex and violence in favor of sentimental plantation ballads and sweet vocal harmonies.
		The Christy Minstrels' ten-year stint on Broadway and their successful tour of England helped establish them as the world's preeminent minstrel troupe.
	www.pbs.org /wgbh/amex/foster/peopleevents/p_christy.html (529 words)

	Antebellum and Civil War America, 1784-1865
		Rice also helped to develop the minstrel show by increasing the use of fl dialect plantation songs, banjo and fiddle music, virtuoso dancing, and crude humor, and he helped to establish a better sense of organization.
		Emmett was also a member of a popular minstrel group called the Virginia Minstrels and the composer of the famous pro- Southern walk-around called "Dixie." White performers were not the only ones to achieve success from flface minstrelsy; fls benefited, as well.
		Clayton Henderson credits the Virginia Minstrels for setting down the foundation for other groups to follow by presenting a new style for the other troupes to adapt to their shows.
	www.uncp.edu /home/canada/work/allam/17841865/music/music4.htm (1342 words)

	Dan Emmett,the Man Who Wrote Dixie
		Before long, a "minstrel craze" seemed to be sweeping the country, as other minstrel groups jumped into the fray.
		Minstrel bands with names like The Christy Minstrels, The Congo Minstrels, The Ethiopian Serenaders, The Southern Minstrels and The Virginia Vocalists were soon performing "authentic Ethiopian melodies" and dances for the American public.
		Known as one of the hottest minstrel groups, the Minstrels were the rage of New York.
	www.nativeground.com /danemmett.asp (1939 words)

	Bluegrass Music: iBluegrass.com, Your #1 Source for Bluegrass (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Proponents of the theory that minstrels taught mountaineers to play banjo, however, ignore the fact that slaves accompanied the earliest settlers into the mountains, or claim, apparently without research, that there were not enough slaves in the mountains to have maintained a banjo tradition.
		The mountain frontier of Virginia and North Carolina was populated in part by servants free of indenture and free fls hoping to improve their circumstances.
		By the mid-1700s the banjo was transported to the Virginia and North Carolina frontiers by the 'lower classes,' which included enslaved African, free fls, white indentured servants, and servants free of indenture.
	www.ibluegrass.com /vi_posting3.CFM?p__i=1115&p__r=&p__a=featu (3172 words)

	Who Was Jim Crow?
		The minstrel show was one of the first native forms of American entertainment, and Rice was rightly regarded as the "Father of American minstrelsy." He had many imitators.
		In 1843, four White men from Virginia, billed as the "Virginia Minstrels," darkened their faces and imitated the singing and dancing of Blacks.
		The minstrel shows were popular between 1850 and 1870, but they lost much of their national popularity with the coming of motion pictures and radios.
	www.ferris.edu /news/jimcrow/who.htm (780 words)

	UVa Library: Exhibits: Lift Every Voice: Minstrels
		Although vaudeville replaced minstrel shows as the most popular form of professional musical theater at the turn of the twentieth century, minstrelsy retained a presence in amateur theatricals until the 1950s.
		This photograph was taken at a minstrel show at the Elk's Lodge in Charlottesville, held on February 2 and 3, 1925.
		Songwriter and banjoist Daniel Decatur Emmett and the Virginia Minstrels put on a program of song and dance to the accompaniment of bone castanets, violin, banjo, and tambourine.
	www.lib.virginia.edu /small/exhibits/music/minstrels.html (973 words)

	HUP Popular Music/Culture/Raising Cain/Excerpts
		Already a harlequin mask in the late eighteenth century, bald pate and brows disguising the individual beneath, the visage of labour by the 1840s could be somehow rendered grotesque and faceless; a mass unrecognizable to capital as human thus became subject to the most extreme form of discipline.
		In one of its simplest forms, the argument about the beginning of the minstrel show revolves around whether its initial instance was in late January or early February 1843 at the Chatham Theatre when Dan Emmett's Virginia Minstrels first performed.
		A few more days of practice and they would go to the Chatham Theatre for the first formulaic minstrel show--a benefit for Pelham, a boon for the depressed New York theatre, a defining wedge for the construction of whiteness, and an albatross around the neck of fl culture that has yet to be lifted.
	www.hup.harvard.edu /features/popmusic/excerpts/raisecaine2.html (953 words)

	CD Baby: THE CANEBRAKE MINSTRELS: Finer than frog hair
		Minstrel music is the bedrock not only of popular American music, but of American culture as well.
		Minstrel music and the minstrel shows, in fact, form the genesis of American music we know of today as ragtime, jazz, blues, bluegrass, country, old-time, and even rock 'n' roll.
		The 19th century minstrel show has been described by Robert Winans as "theatrical music." The names of the pieces performed were often featured on handbills and concert postings.
	www.cdbaby.com /cd/canebrake (2726 words)

	American Experience \| Stephen Foster \| People & Events
		The Virginia Minstrels, as the new flface troupe was called, honed their act in a number of New York performances before premiering their first full-scale "Ethiopian Concert" at the Masonic Temple in Boston on March 7, 1843.
		As pioneered by Emmett and his troupe, the minstrel show took on a standard format, consisting of two or sometimes three parts.
		Almost from the start, Emmett's Virginia Minstrels were a smash hit -- but their run would be short lived.
	www.pbs.org /wgbh/amex/foster/peopleevents/p_emmett.html (709 words)

	Songwriters Hall of Fame (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		His own company was instrumental in establishing many of the early minstrel routines and rituals, including the traditional costume of blue, swallow tailcoat, striped calico shirt, and the white pantaloons.
		A large group of minstrel show competitors were formed due to the great success of his shows.
		Introduced by the Dan Bryant Minstrels in 1859 during a tour of the South, “Dixie” was written as a walk-around.
	www.songwritershalloffame.org /exhibit_home_page.asp?exhibitId=196 (590 words)

	Minstrelsy 3 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		A decade after flface routines became popular, the minstrel show was born.
		The Virginia Minstrels are generally credited with putting on the first minstrel show, lining up four actor/musicians in a row, with "Bones" at one end and "Tambo" at the other.
		It was common in pictures to show minstrels in both their "whiteface" and "flface" identities.
	etext.lib.virginia.edu /railton/enam358/minstrl3.html (79 words)

	Dancer History Archives by StreetSwing.com - Thomas Dartmouth Rice - aka Jim Crow - Main Page
		Traveling Minstrels have been around along time, they were basically traveling performers of the old Gypsy type we think today.
		The minstrel show was to come around much later and was one of the first inherent forms of ante-bellum American stage entertainment.
		The Minstrel shows first began around February 1843 when a group of four white men from Virginia, the "Virginia Minstrels", applied fl cork to their faces and performed a song-and-dance act in a small hall in New York City.
	www.streetswing.com /histmai2/d2rice1.htm (457 words)

	Title
		"The Virginia Minstrels," with their original members did not last long and after an unprofitable trip to London they effectively broke up.
		Emmett still called them "The Virginia Minstrels" to attempt to quickly regain their popularity before the European tour.
		This popularity led to him opening a minstrel house at 104 Randolph Street later called "Emmett's Burlesque Ethiopian Varieties" where he was proprietor, manager and occasional performer.
	www.angelfire.com /ny/broadwayandbeyond/DanEmmett.html (880 words)

	Banjo in Traditional Music
		The very essence of minstrelsy was fl-face caricatures which became increasingly popular toward the end of the 18th century, leading to fully fledged fl-face skits and songs on stage throughout white America by the middle of the 19th century.
		The leader of the Virginia Minstrels was Joel Walker Sweeney who was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, in 1810.
		The overwhelming likelihood is that it was the 5-string banjo of the minstrels and not the earlier three or four string variety which was common on the plantations.
	www.standingstones.com /banjo.html (1717 words)

	IHAS: Artist/Movement/Ideas
		The minstrel show, which crystallized in the early 1840's, was arguably the first distinct American music-theatre genre.
		Before long minstrel troupes were organized, the earliest of these the Virginia Minstrels (to whom Dan Emmet belonged for a time) and the Christy Minstrels, whose overwhelming success paved the way for hundreds of other companies, among them the Sable Minstrels, the Virginia Harmonists, the Harmoneons, and the Ethiopian Operatic Brothers.
		But the idiom in which the Hutchinsons, excelled was the protest song, and they took their message of Abolition and social reform throughout the land, performing at Union rallies after the war broke out and going on to champion universal suffrage and women's rights after its close.
	www.thirteen.org /ihas/icon/emmet.html (619 words)

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