The Banjo- From the Valley to the City, Riding the Minstrel Wave (Part 3)

The banjo would eventually make it’s way from the plantations of the valley to the major cities of the east, south and north, and on later to mining and frontier towns of the west. If a traveler made their way to a town that was large enough to have a theater or a population with money, they would most likely hear the banjo. But it was not as much for an appreciation of the banjo, than for the show it was a part of that led to it’s rapid spread and popularity across the country. The minstrel show, playing the popular music of the day, was definitely a far reaching influence on the popularity of the banjo, not only in this country, but in England and Australia as well. But it was the instrument of choice to portray racist and degrading stereotypes of blacks, and was only playing a role in the dissemination of this ugly pastime. That it caught the ear of countless thousands of people in that time is testament to it’s sound and legacy, but it was this show that helped it reach those ears. The most popular minstrel troupes, like Christy’s Minstrels, Buckley’s Serenaders, The Congo Melodists and The Virginia Minstrels, made their fame in the major cities. A few of them toured to San Francisco during the height of the Gold Rush, but they mostly stayed where the money was in the eastern coast and northern cities. Lesser known minstrel troupes had to travel to smaller towns and territories to make a living. These troupes could be seen in all of the railhead towns in Kansas, as well as the mining communities in Colorado and the Dakotas. This new phenomenon literally swept across this country, then on to others.

Although white theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to as early as 1604, the minstrel show has later origins. By the late 17th century, blackface characters began appearing on the American stage, usually as "servant” types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief. But only later, in the early 1800’s, did this form of entertainment take on it’s truly sinister form and popularity. The popularity of minstrel shows in major northern cities emerged just as social changes in these cities were occurring. Up until the early 19th century, it had been common for Europeans and African Americans to participate in celebrations together. Laws began to discourage biracial celebrations and blacks were driven from festivities. By the 1830s, common celebrations had been eliminated. It was just as African American performers and celebrations disappeared that blackface became a prevalent pastime.

The stock-in-trade of the minstrel show was the parody of the lifestyles of slaves and free African Americans. These savage caricatures of the lives of African Americans were met with overwhelming approbation among white audiences. Stereotyped blackface characters developed: buffoonish, lazy, superstitious, cowardly, and lascivious characters; who stole, lied pathologically, and mangled the English language. Stock characters of the minstrel show included Jim Crow, Mr. Tambo, a joyous musician, and Zip Coon, a free black attempting to put on airs in imitation of white gentry. Skits and satirical speeches were delivered in stylized black dialect. Early blackface minstrels were all male, so cross-dressing white men also played black women who were often portrayed either as unappealingly and grotesquely mannish; either in the matronly, mammy mold; or highly sexually provocative. To put this entertainment form into context, the 1830s American stage, where blackface first rose to prominence, featured similarly comic stereotypes of the clever Yankee and the larger-than-life Frontiersman; the late 19th- and early 20th-century American and British stage where it last prospered featured many other, mostly ethnically-based, comic stereotypes: conniving, venal Jews, drunken brawling Irishmen with blarney at the ready; oily Italians, stodgy Germans and gullible rural rubes.

Into this volatile and superficial, yet immensely popular scene came the minstrel show. As a result, the genre played an important role in shaping perceptions and prejudices about African Americans. Some social commentators have stated that blackface provided an outlet for whites' fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar, and a way of expressing their feelings and fears about race and control. Writes Eric Lott in Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, "The black mask offered a way to play with the collective fears of a degraded and threatening other. While at the same time maintaining some symbolic control over them.” These shows gave the American audience a place to concentrate their viewed superiority and frustration with troublesome new immigrants and slaves. The objectification of African American culture denigrated that culture, while providing entertainment using that same culture. The weird spectacle of it had to be the draw to some people. It would occur in smoky saloons, small theaters in railroad towns and in traveling circus acts. It initially attracted younger whites who sometimes competed with African Americans for jobs, or who just viewed themselves as superior. And so at first, these minstrel shows were rowdy and an outlet for this young set.
Again, Eric Lott says- “In the 1830s and into the 1840s, it was for a quite localized and specific working class, lower middle-class, mostly male audience that responded very vocally to the kinds of syncopated, pre-rock and roll sounds that were put forward on the minstrel stage. It was a rousing event, and at a time in theater history when it was typical and more or less sanctioned for men to rush the stage. It was rowdy, people collecting right in front of the footlights, spitting tobacco on the floor in the theatre. These men would dance around, and people called for their favorites and booed things they didn't want to hear. They spit upon the stage, they threw peanut shells on the stage, and the jumpy quality that the music exemplified was right up their alley.”

It was Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice who first popularized the crude blackface show in 1828 with his performance that became known as “Jim Crow”. Rice's character was a crippled plantation slave who danced and sang. The name Jim Crow later became attached to statutes that codified the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination after Reconstruction. Rice and other performers also used this forum to respond to the anti-slavery movement with proslavery renditions about happy-go-lucky slaves. They also criticized emancipation, civil rights, and the Freedmen's Bureau activities. For most white audiences, these viewpoints were easy to accept. It's not really a coincidence that T. D. Rice and the so-called Ethiopian Delineators got going in the early 1830s. That's precisely when issues around slavery and abolition begin to heat up- not at the center of American politics but certainly at its margins and increasingly moving towards the center. In 1831 there was the Nat Turner rebellion. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison began his newspaper, The Liberator, in Boston, proclaiming the cause of immediate abolition. By the middle of the 1830s there are tense riots directed against abolitionists in the North and in the South.
Eventually, performers like T.D. Rice appeared in entr’actes in New York theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. Blackface soon found a home in the taverns of New York's less respectable precincts of Lower Broadway, the Bowery, and Chatham Street. It also invaded the more respectable stage as part of the era's general stratification of theaters. These upper-class houses at first limited the number of such acts they would show, but beginning in 1841, blackface performers frequently took to the stage at even the classy Park Theater, much to the dismay of some patrons. Theater was a participatory activity, and the lower classes came to dominate the playhouse. They threw things at actors or orchestras who performed unpopular material, and rowdy audiences eventually prevented the Bowery Theatre from staging high drama at all.

But as blackface shows gained popularity, and started to make their way into the nicer venues, the entertainment and musical aspect became more refined, and the form took on a pattern. 1830s and early 1840s blackface performers performed solo or duos, with the occasional trio; but the traveling troupes that would later characterize blackface performance arise with the minstrel show.

The staging of Dan Emmett's Virginia Minstrels at New York’s Bowery Theatre on February 6th, 1843 marks the beginning of the full-blown minstrel show in which the entire cast “blackened up”. Emmett’s core group included a banjo, a fiddle, a tambourine player, and a bones player. These instruments constituted the basic minstrel ensemble and this formula was imitated by professional and amateur musicians alike.
So the banjo and fiddle combo, with tambourine and bones accompaniment, became the outfit of choice to portray the culture of African Americans to this white crowd. Because the banjo and fiddle were commonly and widely used on the plantations by the African Americans there, they were the highlighted instruments in the minstrel show. That black musicians used these instruments was true, but in a different context. On the plantations, it was rare to hear these two instruments together. There would usually be one player or singer on either banjo or fiddle. They could keep the room or party entertained or dancing by themselves, occasionally accompanied by a fife or a bones player. Because the blacks on the plantation commonly used these instruments for their rituals and get-togethers, the southern whites who wished to copy or emulate this music naturally used these instruments in their routines. They had learned this music from interaction with slaves on the plantations or in areas surrounding them. Some grew up around plantations, or in towns where former slaves and indentured servants lived as well, and picked up the music from interaction or simply observing. So although the context in which this music was presented was racist and not truly representative of black culture, the whites who learned this African-American music did popularize the clawhammer or frailing styles that blacks had brought from Africa. In that sense, the playing styles presented were traditional techniques, only presented as a lowly, simplified and denigrated cultural form. (I will expand on these styles and their cultural context in Part 6)

Some black minstrel performers emerged during the Civil War, but they became more prevalent after 1865. Black performers rose in popularity and they formed into troupes. Unlike white performers, black entertainers did not always perform in blackface, but by the late 19th century, white audiences insisted on it.
Walter Thompson writes about the black minstrels of San Francisco in his 1916 article “Among the Merry Men of Minstrelsy“. He remembers the talent of those that formed into the San Francisco Minstrels, but he especially admires the greater talent that came later. The emergence of Billy Emerson, a talented singer and dancer, brought life to a new minstrel character, the dandy. It replaced the Jim Crow plantation slave with a character that sang new songs, which provided a new kind of rhythm for dancing. Thompson also remembers Charley Reed, Emerson's partner, who brought a comic flair to the stage; Tommy Dixon, a talented singer; and several other minstrels who were gifted comedians, singers, and dancers. It is important to note that blacks’ participation in the minstrel show was regarded with high caution by other blacks. Some despised the black performers, some were indifferent. Although all involved knew the degrading nature of the entertainment, some black leaders considered it a good sign if blacks were allowed to perform in front of white audiences and garner decent wages for it. But almost all blacks knew that whatever form their participation was, it was degrading all the same, as it showed their culture in a simplified and utterly disrespectful way.

Some blacks owned and managed troupes, but they were often limited to performances in smaller towns and cities. Billy Emerson was one of the few who owned and managed his own theater, which became a popular entertainment spot in San Francisco. However, in general, whites owned and managed the most prosperous troupes. By the 1870s, white ownership was dominant. It was also the white owned troupes that traveled throughout the United States and around the world. So it was for a white, European, ethnically biased audience that these shows were performed, and the popularity of these shows affected popular music and entertainment in this country for decades. Even in some ways affecting how entertainment, specifically African American entertainment, was viewed across the world.