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Appendix: Blackface Scholarship
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Appendix Blackface Scholarship General Comments: Observation, Appropriation, and Synthesis The scholarly literature informing the present study occupies several overlapping areas of investigation, both within and beyond that of musicology. The modern “rehabilitation” of blackface minstrelsy as a topic for serious scholarly investigationdatesroughlyfromHansNathan’s1962DanEmmettandtheRiseof Early Negro Minstrelsy.1 Since that publication—which still forms a cornerstone of the repertoire’s musicological analysis—subsequent texts by Dale Cockrell, Eric Lott, William Mahar, and W. T. Lhamon Jr., among others, have deepened ourunderstandingofminstrelsy’stheatrical,semiotic,economic,andsociological implications.2 This book takes a crucial next step by arguing that, for all the noxious racist stereotypes that blackface no doubt manifested—and that recent scholarshiphassuccessfullynuancedandcomplicated—theblackfaceminstrels not only were opportunist appropriators but were also engaged in a kind of quasi-ethnographic “participant observation.”3 At least as far back as Charles Dibdin (1745–1814) in his 1768 ballad opera The Padlock, and probably since first African immigration to the New World, close observation and imitation of expressive arts, crossing the color line or lines in both directions, had been prototypical components in the creole synthesis. Unquestionably the minstrels’ activities involved racism, exploitation, appropriation , and opportunism.4 Yet despite these tendencies, which in some scholarly eras have delegitimized minstrelsy as a topic for research, the African American sources’ creativity and the Anglo-Celtic imitators’ close observation, and their willingness to blur certain racial boundaries, made possible the first American popular-music craze. The racial bias and economic exploitation inherent in the blackface innovators’ conduct need not—any more than in other epochs of popular music and indeed of ethnographic scholarship itself—blind us to the potential insights available in their observational data.5 The following texts, which represent all eras of blackface scholarship, have played a significant role in developing the thesis of this book. In the discussion , the assignment of various texts as representative of certain categories 218 appendix of scholarship should not be taken as limiting those texts’ relevance only to those single categories. Primary Sources The fundamental primary sources in any study focusing on Mount as a reporter on minstrelsy’s creole synthesis are his own artworks, ephemera, and physical heirlooms, the vast majority of which are held in the archive and collection of the Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages , in Mount’s birthplace of Setauket, New York.6 The museum collection includes both material objects (Mount’s flutes, tin whistles, self-designed violin and music-stand prototypes—even his kazoo and tuning fork); thousands of letters (of interest especially for the correspondence between himself and his musical colleagues, including brother Robert Nelson Mount, an itinerant dancing master); diaries and other autobiographical material; a vast collection of printed and manuscript music both collected by Mount and inherited from his uncle Micah Hawkins; hundreds of pages of pencil sketches and watercolors; and over three fourths of his total catalog of oil paintings. Additional primary source materials are held by the New-York Historical Society on Central Park, the New York Historical Association in Cooperstown, and, in small numbers, at various museums elsewhere in the United States.7 This book is heavily dependent on extensive investigation in these archives, and is particularly indebted to the assistance of the staff, historians, archivists, and friends of the Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages. Other types of primary-source documents also make essential contributions . Although the illustrated newspapers cited widely by Cockrell, Lhamon, and Lott are an important resource for understanding minstrelsy in the 1830s and ’40s, their reportage on earlier multiethnic contacts and music in New York is relatively indirect—and their print runs largely postdate the street roots of minstrelsy.8 On the other hand, the Market Book, a set of antebellum reminiscences by Lower East Side butcher Thomas De Voe, is frequently cited, in part because of its relatively unique character—few contemporaneous sources match it.9 Analogous primary material is also available in the reminiscences of period actors and singers: for example, most of the information available on the preminstrelsy theatrical career of “Jump Jim Crow” originator Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808–1860) comes from the autobiography of his first employer, the Albany-born impresario Noah Ludlow (1795–1886).10 Ludlow’s prolix memoirs are a useful primary resource on the experience of early nineteenth century touring theatrical troupes and the degrees to which [18.227.161.132] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:18 GMT) appendix 219 their members’ practical combination of comic, acrobatic, and dance...