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andprogenitorofthesoftshoe.Heledhisowntroupe,BillyKersands’Minstrels, and in the 1870s and 1880s was the highest-paid black entertainer of the day, as popular among blacks as among whites. He once told a fellow entertainer: “Son, if they hate me, I’m still whipping them, because I’m making them laugh.” Black men in blackface seem disreputable still in the eyes of history— misunderstood, neglected, regarded as an embarrassment. Today Kersands, like Lucas, is ignored by the five volumes of the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (1966), and by the six volumes of The African American Encyclopedia (1993). Not so for the apparently more respectable James A. Bland, one of whose compositions came to be embraced in 1940 as the state song of Virginia. Bland wasborntoafreefamilyinFlushing,NewYork,andgrewupinWashington,D.C., where his father was an examiner with the U.S. Patent Office. James attended Howard University before joining Haverly’s Colored Minstrels, in which Lucas andKersandsalsoworked.HewaslaterafeaturedmemberofSprague’sGeorgia Minstrels, and became a sort of black Stephen Foster, composing minstrel classics such as “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” (1878) and “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” (1879). Like Stephen Foster before him, he died in poverty. Bert Williams (1874–1922), an immigrant from Antigua who would become the most famous of black entertainers, entered minstrelsy in 1892, after attending Stanford University. Shepherd Edmonds (1876–1957) from Memphis, and Sylvester Russell (c. 1865–1930) from New Jersey, were two noted black musicians who worked in the 1890s in the Al G. Field Minstrels. Russell went on to become a music and drama editor for The Freeman. From one black troupe alone, the Mississippi-based Rabbit Foot Minstrels, would emerge the classic big-city blues singers Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith, as well as the rhythm-and-blues progenitor Louis Jordan. Rufus Thomas, whose“BearCat”of1953becamethefirsthitonSamPhillips’slittleSunRecords label,wasalatter-dayalumnusoftheRabbitFootMinstrels,aswasthebluesartist Skip James. W.C. Handy, the so-called father of the blues, was a minstrel musicianfrom1896to1903 .Country-bluessingerswhoworkedinblackfaceincluded Furry Lewis, Jim Jackson, and Big Joe Williams. Wedealherenotonlywiththedesiretoprosper,ortheuniversalhumanneed forsurvival,butalsowiththemysteriesofthepsyche.Theideaofblacksinblackface may at first glance seem to invite all manner of philosophical inquiry. But is the willingness of blacks to assume the mask of gross stereotype any more bafflingortroublingthantheuniversaltendencytomasquerade ?WhiteSoutherners stillembraceandcultivatethetheatricallydefinedstereotypeofthegoodol’boy. ItalianAmericansmimicthewordsandwaysandassumetherolesthatHollywood hascreatedforthem.TheIrishstereotypeinAmericawouldevaporatewereitnot 64 THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 64 forthedevotiontorole-playingthatlendsthemtheillusionofactuality.America, alone of nations, envisioned herself in terms of a dream. Nothing in this country isreal;everyoneisanactor.Fromlong-tailbluetodashiki,fromorgan-grinderto the godfather, it is all a masquerade. If the halcyon lark of antebellum plantation lifeinventedbyminstrelsywasasham,itwasatleastashamthatfewperformers took for reality. The same cannot be said of modern cultural shams such as the fantasyofAfrican-Americanrootsperceivedin,say,Kwanzaa,aholidayinvented inAmericain1966,andperhapsnotmuchcloserthanminstrelsytotherealityof anytrueAfricanculture.Likethestereotypicalposingsofrap,KwanzaaKulturis an emanation not unlike minstrelsy. As always, it is the noble white man— Hallmark and the corporate media—who profits most. Popularcultureisoftentheproductofwhoweareonlyinthatitistheproduct of the lies, pretenses, and falsehoods that define us, and beneath which we hide and often, ultimately, lose the little truth from which we flee. Its meaning, insofarasithasanymeaningatall,isessentiallypathetic.Inthecaseoftheblack maninblackface,itcanatleastbesaidthathismotivewasforthright,respectable, and pure: that is, money, the all-American, multicultural tradition of selling out. The same can be true of the professional good ol’ boy, the Italian American, the Irishman, as long as they are faking it onstage, selling it to the suckers. It is when theybearthemasquerade,therole,offstage—whenthestage-walkandthestagetalkbecomethestreet -walkandthestreet-talk,whenshowbusinessbecomesthe businessoflife—thattheybecometrulyfrauds,withthefraudtakenonestepfurther by white audiences who in turn make it their own street-act. As far as I can tell, this was not the case generally with blacks who blacked up to make a buck. Offstagetheylivedapartfromstereotype,whichismorethancanbesaidofmany of the professional ethnic pretenders of today, be they white or black, singers or actors—or audience members. Dan Emmett, the founder of the Virginia Minstrels, had gone on to join Bryant’s Minstrelsin1858.Ayearlaterheintroducedthesong“Dixie.”Thoughspeculation regarding its true origin has been ceaseless, the song was copyrighted in his name as“IWishIWasinDixie’sLand”in1860.Attendingaminstrelshownotlongbefore the election of that year, Abraham Lincoln heard “Dixie” for the first time, and he wassoenrapturedbyitthatheholleredout,“Let’shaveitagain!Let’shaveitagain!” As the war that followed neared its end, he advocated the song as one that the reunitednationcouldjoininsinging.Ifthefoundingofthefirstminstreltroupehad notrenderedDanEmmettthemostcelebratedandlegendaryofminstrels,“Dixie” surelydid.ItbecametheanthemoftheSouth,andheitsblackfaceOrpheus. By the time of his death at eighty-nine in 1904 (the year Al Jolson began appearing in blackface), younger minstrels had taken to adopting the name of Emmett in tribute and for cachet. It was a practice that continued well into the BOOK OF GREAT MUSIC WRITING 65 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08...

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