The Minstrel Show. The white actors wore black paste over their faces to depict African Americans. The music mainly played included the banjo and melody lyric lines that emulated Afro Folk music, using drums as an accompaniment. This music had a groove, and the infectious stories led this music to become a popular genre. The paradox of a black-faced person represented in the minstrels served a dual purpose of presenting African Americans to a highly cultured event with music the audience Identified with, which is the driving component to its success.
These paradoxes are found throughout modern stage show genres like the Minstrel music and theater. In modern times, events such as Cirque du Soleil are examples of serving a highly cultured crowd, as mentioned in the HBR: “adults and corporate clients who had turned to theater, opera, or ballet and were, therefore, prepared to pay several times more than the price of a conventional circus ticket for an unprecedented entertainment experience.” A similar experience is expected of high-quality comedic entertainment and music. The Cirque de Soleil embraced the shocked value, which is identical, in some regards, to seeing a blackfaced person performing songs that you find pleasant. Although jarring to look at now, these images were entertaining to the culture.
The use of the racial conations of using the blackface and the “dance” is found throughout the music. The way the actors gyrated their hips and the energetic movement of the tap-dancing routines, the audience found it entertaining as they filled concert halls across the country. A lot can studied from the Minstrel show. For one, associating “black faces” (looks like the arms as well) with good music can be seen as an homage and possibly a way to relieve racial tensions. I have not dived into the study, but as seen by the success of Jams A. Bland, the Minstrel genre opened doors to black performers, although they did not enjoy the same financial gratuity as their white colleagues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qph-SIAL9E
The Artist James A. Bland was a composer and songwriter for the Minstrel show era, the Tin Pan Alley. As a banjo player, he found his way through the music industry by writing catchy tones for an all-black minstrel company, George Minstrels.
Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2024, June 6). Blue Ocean Strategy. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2004/10/blue-ocean-strategy
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