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Previous page on path Next page on path. Vaudeville was celebrated by many of its contemporary critics as the epitome of American democratic mixing, the melting pot in action.
These observations usually concentrated on the mixing of the classes and the chance for European immigrants to integrate into an imagined ideal American culture. Less was said about how vaudeville's easy play with race and ethnicity—in its "Dutch," "Irish," and "Hebrew" acts and its blackface performers—both challenged and reinforced racial hierarchies.
Popular white performers such as Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson gained famed as blackface minstrels and went on to successful film careers, while black vaudeville troupes such as the Georgia Minstrels who were also popular and successful in their day had to avoid the South, where one of their members was lynched in It was no accident that minstrelsy found its way onto the vaudeville stage.
Both burlesque and vaudeville had borrowed structural elements from blackface minstrel shows At its height in the s, the minstrel show usually was divided into three parts. In its opening act, the entire ensemble performed dances and songs, then arranged itself in a semicircle. At the center sat the interlocutor and the two "end men," Tambo and Bones named after their instruments, the tambourine and bones anchored either end of the arc.
This part of the show centered on verbal interplay, malapropisms and misinterpretation. Next came the "olio," in which a succession cast members performed variety acts. The highlight of this section was the " stump speech, " a dialect monologue built of puns and double entendres that engaged with the political issues of the day. The final act was a burlesque of a popular play or piece of literature, sometimes set on a plantation.
Burlesque borrowed the three-act structure of the minstrel show at least until the rise of the striptease in the 20th century and vaudeville it's olio.
In , E. He also gave the semi-circular seating arrangement, the use of clowns Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones, as well as Mr. Interlocutor, who acted as the master of ceremonies. Enslaved African Americans probably made the first American banjos from gourds in the 18th century, basing them on traditional African stringed instruments.
It became a popular feature of minstrel shows around the time of the Civil War. The popularity of the minstrel show declined after the Civil War, but the damage was done. After the Civil War, African Americans began to apply the burnt cork to their own faces and perform in the minstrelsy. In order for African American artists to perform they too had to adhere to the conventions of the stage. Annemarie Bean quotes James Weldon Johnson, who performed as a minstrel, explaining the complicated nature of African American participation in the form:.
They provided an essential training and theatrical experience, which, at the time, could not have been acquired from any other source. Bean, p. The most important masquerades are those through which the spirits enter the human world. In these, the human performer is not simply hidden from view, but is the embodied spirit. The supernatural and secret ability makes the mask, the masker, and the masquerade sacred and powerful.
While Africans in the Americas did not have the physical mask, they often continued these sacred rituals by subsuming African sacred practices in Christian religious practices and icons, which gave rise to such syncretic religions as Vodun, Candomble, and Santeria.
Masking was also used to conceal secular rituals such as the African martial arts calinda and capoeira. I venture to think and dare to state that our profession does more toward the alleviation of color prejudice than any other profession among colored people.
The fact of the matter is this, that we come into contact with more white people in a week than other professional colored people meet in a year and more than some meet in a whole decade…When a large audience leaves the theatre after a creditable two and a half hour performance by Negroes, I am sure the Negro race is raised in the estimation of the people….
Yet, masking did not always shield these performers from danger. Shortly after midnight on the morning of Sunday, February 16, , black minstrel performer Louis Wright was lynched by hanging in New Madrid, Missouri. Prior to the performance, he was involved in an altercation with several white men from the town. The performance itself was marred with insults and jeers hurled from the audience.
After the minstrels left the stage, a few white men rushed it in an apparent attempt to harm or even lynch some of the performers. However, there was something minstrel audiences did not see.
They did not see how Africa took to the American stage and created what would be the first known American theater form. They would not know that the banjo itself is an adaptation of the West African kora and continues the tradition of the djeli in the Americas. In these, the human performer is not simply hidden from view, but is the embodied spirit, through stomping, clapping, and the percussive striking of the body.
The dance is said to have originally been brought from the Congo by enslaved Africans. It may have also developed in Haiti where it was known as Giouba or Djouba.
Minstrel audiences would not see William Henry Lane, who is credited as one of the most influential figures in the creation of American tap dance. Lane developed a unique style of using his body as a musical instrument, blending African-derived syncopated rhythms with movements of the Irish jig and reel.
In witnessing the white gloved hands of the minstrel men, they would not see the beautiful gestures of the adowa dance from Ghana. In watching Africans perform, whether on the plantation or selling fish at the wharf at Little Five Points in New York City, the complicated language of this dance survives.
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