MINSTRELSY

Blackface minstrelsy—America's first, and, for half a century, dominant mass entertainment—defies pat generalizations. Minstrel shows were in large part racist travesties (or just bizarre fantasies), yet minstrels drew on authentic Black folklore, especially music, song, and dance, and influenced all American music that followed, including subsequent African American innovations. Minstrelsy appealed enormously to Black audiences, and thousands of Black artists actively participated. Following the Civil War, “Georgia Minstrels” became a generic term for Blacks in blackface, many of them formerly enslaved people portraying plantation traditions. Dozens of ex-slaves had experienced or even participated in minstrelsy or similar entertainments: circuses, wild west shows, vaudeville. In addition, minstrels borrowed many songs from, and contributed many others to, Black oral tradition, and ex-slaves perfectly illustrated that cycle. They knew numerous minstrel songs (or songs recomposed by minstrels), but just as often remembered instead the antebellum Black folksongs that minstrels had borrowed.