Blackface nation : race, reform, and identity in American popular music, 1812-1925 /
Roberts, Brian, 1957-
Blackface nation : race, reform, and identity in American popular music, 1812-1925 / Brian Roberts. - Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, (c)2017. - 1 online resource.
Includes bibliographies and index.
As the United States transitioned from a rural nation to an urbanized, industrial giant between the War of 1812 and the early twentieth century, ordinary people struggled over the question of what it meant to be American. As Brian Roberts shows in 'Blackface Nation', this struggle is especially evident in popular culture and the interplay between two specific strains of music: middle-class folk and blackface minstrelsy. The Hutchinson Family Singers, the Northeast's most popular middle-class singing group during the mid-nineteenth century, are perhaps the best example of the first strain of music. The group's songs expressed an American identity rooted in communal values, with lyrics focusing on abolition, women's rights, and socialism. Blackface minstrelsy, on the other hand, emerged out of an audience-based coalition of Northern business elites, Southern slaveholders, and young, white, working-class men, for whom blackface expressed an identity rooted in individual self-expression, anti-intellectualism, and white superiority. Its performers embodied the love-crime version of racism, in which vast swaths of the white public adored African Americans who fit blackface stereotypes even as they used those stereotypes to rationalize white supremacy. By the early twentieth century, the blackface version of the American identity had become a part of America's consumer culture while the Hutchinsons' songs were increasingly regarded as old-fashioned.
9780226451787
African Americans--Music--History and criticism.
Popular music--History and criticism.--United States--19th century
Popular music--History and criticism.--United States--20th century
Minstrel music--History and criticism.--United States
Music and race--History.--United States
Electronic Books.
ML3479 / .B533 2017
Blackface nation : race, reform, and identity in American popular music, 1812-1925 / Brian Roberts. - Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, (c)2017. - 1 online resource.
Includes bibliographies and index.
As the United States transitioned from a rural nation to an urbanized, industrial giant between the War of 1812 and the early twentieth century, ordinary people struggled over the question of what it meant to be American. As Brian Roberts shows in 'Blackface Nation', this struggle is especially evident in popular culture and the interplay between two specific strains of music: middle-class folk and blackface minstrelsy. The Hutchinson Family Singers, the Northeast's most popular middle-class singing group during the mid-nineteenth century, are perhaps the best example of the first strain of music. The group's songs expressed an American identity rooted in communal values, with lyrics focusing on abolition, women's rights, and socialism. Blackface minstrelsy, on the other hand, emerged out of an audience-based coalition of Northern business elites, Southern slaveholders, and young, white, working-class men, for whom blackface expressed an identity rooted in individual self-expression, anti-intellectualism, and white superiority. Its performers embodied the love-crime version of racism, in which vast swaths of the white public adored African Americans who fit blackface stereotypes even as they used those stereotypes to rationalize white supremacy. By the early twentieth century, the blackface version of the American identity had become a part of America's consumer culture while the Hutchinsons' songs were increasingly regarded as old-fashioned.
9780226451787
African Americans--Music--History and criticism.
Popular music--History and criticism.--United States--19th century
Popular music--History and criticism.--United States--20th century
Minstrel music--History and criticism.--United States
Music and race--History.--United States
Electronic Books.
ML3479 / .B533 2017