10/01/18   

I was surprised to learn that the banjo was originally an African instrument, played by people of color. Now known as a white mans bluegrass instrument, it is normally not associated with African culture at all. However, this is one example of how minstrel shows in the early 19th to 20th centuries impacted black vs white culture. A type of music or dance popular among blacks in the south were adopted and performed by white men. These white men dressed in “blackface” in order to make themselves look black without actually being black. I found it interesting that a white man could dress up as a black man and draw an audience, but if an actual black man were to get up onstage, there would have been a riot among the crowd.

Stephen Foster, known as “the Father of American Music” was one of the most famous minstrel show composers. He wanted his music to be authentic in mirroring the culture of slaves in the south, so it is said that he actually traveled and learned from them in person. Although, this may or may not be true. I am skeptical of the idea because Foster was a white man living during a time of heavy segregation and dehumanization of anyone who was not white. So if this is true, I doubt the likelihood of Foster essentially being taught by anyone he saw as inferior to himself or his race.

Through the establishment of minstrel shows, black people were essentially turned into stock characters. In advertisements, they were portrayed as almost cartoon-like, with exaggerated features and extremely white teeth and eyes. Often wearing smiles that were a bit too big and costumes that labeled them as minstrel characters, these white men impersonating black men were anything but admirable of black culture. This was the exploitation of black culture and slavery in the south, contributing to the overarching idea that whites were superior to any race. “Throughout the 1830s, early blackface minstrelsy had thrived on raucous tunes such as “Jim Crow” or “Zip Coon” that parodied African American dancing and celebration” (Miller P.34). These songs satirized the life of African Americans, and again pushed for the agenda that whites were the superior race. “By the 1850s, minstrel show composers had turned toward depicting romantic nostalgia for an idealized southern past expressed through burnt-cork caricatures of black southerners” (Miller P.34). This proved to be true even in comparison to Europeans, such as the Irish. Many times Irish people were compared to dogs or apes, and were therefore not entirely considered “white”. As these irishmen began to perform in minstrel shows, they became considered “more white”. Overall there must have been something more that white people wanted from blacks other than establishing white supremacy. If that was all they desired they would not have used minstrel shows as a means of doing so. It appears almost like there is a fascination with black culture; this foreign, different, thing that white men could never experience first hand no matter how badly they wanted too. Blues music, dances, and cultural norms that only black people fully understood and experienced because of their position in society. So, if white men could not have it for themselves, they did whatever possible to take it from those who could. Regardless of the condition of racism in America during this time, minstrel tunes made famous by Tin Pan Alley firms “became an integral part of southern culture (…) white supremacy did not prevent black and white southerners from embracing the same mass-produced music” (Miller P.49). Both blacks and whites sat in the same audiences at minstrel shows, and white people were paying money for the entertainment that can only be credited back to black people. In a way, as much as this highlighted the racial divide in America, minstrel shows also served to decrease this divide.

Weeks after I wrote this blog, I went back and read through it again. Overall this topic was by far the most interesting to me throughout the entirety of the course. It deals with a number of things I am personally fascinated by; music history, people, racism, and human rights. While I will openly admit that I have not found every topic of this course interesting (quite frankly I disagree with the idea that dynamic range is no longer relevant in modern music), the stories of early music spreading throughout the country and how white people adopted it as their own and how oppressed colored people were and degraded through minstrel shows is something I could read about for days on end.  

10/03/2018

I have found that there are many cultural links between different types of people and music that I have never been aware of. For example, as discussed today, I was never aware of of the connection between native Hawaiian music and Christian hymns. From 1778 and on, it was documented that European protestant missionary choirs introduced numerous styles of music to the island. Falsetto singing and and string instruments were brought and introduced by Mexican cowboys, or paniolos. Hawaiians began playing instruments such as the ukulele or steel guitar, and often played the steel guitar on their lap with a steel bar. The craze for Hawaiian music later led to musicians and individuals pretending to be Hawaiian; similar to blackface minstrel shows (as discussed earlier in the course), these performances tended to mock Hawaiian culture rather than celebrate them. Country musicians especially began to dive deep into different styles of Hawaiian guitar. I had personally never realized that there was such a strong connection between music that we listen to every day and cultures that we almost never interact with. I have never actively  taken note of experiencing Hawaiian culture in any part of my everyday life, so to learn that it is already woven in to things I consider part of my own culture is interesting. As discussed in Miller’s book, Tin Pan Alley paired with the emerging railroad system served to link all corners of the country through the spread of popular tunes. Tin Pan Alley essentially “perfected the mass production and distribution process of popular songs” (Miller P.25). In this way, the music of the minstrel shows were able to make it to places in the US that they never had before.

The overarching idea here is that music is inevitably saturated with politics and history. You cannot have a song or a lyric that does not come from somewhere deeper and rich with meaning and context. This highlights the interconnectedness of everything. The simple fact that we cannot exist on our own, separate from everything. This also relates back to an idea discussed earlier in the course that music, like all information, has no central point of return. It is everywhere and incorporates everything, particularly politics and history.