Minstrels | Music 345: Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music

The act of blackface minstrelsy was a form of entertainment in white American circles that started in the 1830’s and fell from popularity in the 1920’s.⁴ It serves to imitate the culture of African Americans, and consists of white performers who painted their faces black to resemble African Americans. The act itself was incredibly racist, serving to exaggerate and exemplify harmful stereotypes of African Americans. Some examples of this are exaggerated characters, deliberately painting a smile on their faces to perpetuate the lie that black people are happy to be enslaved, and highly exaggerating elements of African American culture, such as their dancing, singing, and vernacular. The use of music also helped with this, as music is a powerful way to shape opinion, and minstrel shows were not found without music accompanying. By the 1850’s, the peak of minstrelsy, the typical minstrel show had two parts: the first part with comic exchanges, ballads, and solo performances, and the second part which was vaudeville with specialty acts, clog dances, jigs, female impersonations, and burlesque of popular dramas.⁴ And the craziest part: these performances were normalized within the white community, being one of the most popular forms of entertainment of it’s time. There were ten theaters in New York alone dedicated to minstrelsy.⁴

An advertisement for a minstrel show. New Orleans Daily Creole; November 19, 1856

Minstrel troupes were most popular in the North, but were found throughout the United States. Some more well known troupes would tour often, as shown in the primary source above. The source is from the November 18, 1856 copy of the New Orleans Daily Creole, and advertises the third week of the celebrated Campbell Minstrels, their director Matt Peel, and their programs of “burlesque, negro farce, and black vigils” as well as a show entitled “plantation past times.”¹ The advertisement also proclaims that the shows are “Negro Minstrelsy, by the Model Troupe of the World!!”¹

The cover of the score for “Poor Nelly Ann,” composed by the Campbell Minstrels, depicting the troupe in (bottom photos) and out (top photos) of blackface.

This advertisement is a great example of the negative, exaggerated, and racist nature of these performances. For one, the whole troupe and the director are in fact white blackface performers, who have taken African American culture and created a negative stereotypical experience.

The program from a Campbell Minstrels’ show in Massachusetts in 1852.

In a program from the Campbell Minstrels from a performance in Massachusetts in 1852, there are examples of dances (quickstep) and music (banjo duet, drum and tambourine solos, bone castanet) that exemplify the African American culture.² There are three sections, and the third section is titled with a derogatory term towards African Americans preceded by the word “plantation,” signifying that they are emulating slaves.²

However, something interesting about both the advertisement and the program is that they both advertise burlesque, which led to vaudeville, and ultimately musical theater. These elements of stage performance are still present today, and many people are unaware of the influence that minstrelsy has had over culture today. The horrific, racist act of minstrelsy may be dead today, but we still must be aware of how it is baked into the pie of American culture. We must be aware and consider these results so that we can go forward with more awareness, sensitivity, and a more inclusive headspace so that such acts of degradation will not happen again.

SOURCES
1. “Campbell Minstrels.” In New Orleans Daily Creole. New Orleans, Louisiana, November, 19, 1856. https://infoweb.newsbank.com

2. “West & Peel’s old and original Campbell Minstrels!” in American Broadsides and Ephemera. Worcester, Massachusetts. 1852. https://infoweb.newsbank.com

3. “Poor Nelly Ann’ / composed and sung by the Campbell Minstrels.” 1848. https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/poor-nelly-ann-composed-and-sung-by-the-campbell-minstrels./2023272

4. Salamone, Frank A. “Minstrelsy” from Encyclopedia of American Studies. 2021. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NjcwNjc=

In our readings and listenings on minstrelsy, we have come across the minstrel song, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” a sentimental tune seeming to long for simpler slave life back in the South. In an address to the State Legislature of Missouri, Dr. Joseph McDowell mentions this song as “the song of the old African,” arguing that it holds such a special place in the hearts and minds of former slaves because “no negro over left her soil but carried in his bosom a desire to return, and a vivid recollection of her hospitality and kindess”.¹ The lyrics, pictured below, begin “Carry me back to old Virginny, There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow…. There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.”

“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” notated music, composed by James Bland. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas. 200000735/

Written in 1878, the song was a “longtime staple” of minstrel shows², a renowned favorite, bearing what we would deem now to be controversial lyrics. It was performed by many minstrel troupes, notably by the Georgia Minstrels, the “first successful all-black minstrel company,” of which the composer of this song was a prolific member.³ Furthermore, in 1940, the song was adopted by the state of Virginia as the official state song, and remained as such until 1997 when it was withdrawn due to complaints that the lyrics were racist, and was instead made the state song emeritus (an honorary state song).⁴

James Bland’s 3 Great Songs
http://www.blackpast.org/files/ blackpast_images/James_A__Bland __public_domain_.jpg

The element of this that I find most intriguing and complex is that the song was written by a black man, James Bland, to be performed in blackface minstrelsy. As we discussed in class, white people performing in blackface is an inappropriate and, quite frankly, a disgusting practice, but the morals get a bit trickier when it comes to black people performing in blackface. Bland used minstrel shows to his professional and financial benefit, using the stage as a platform to broadcast his musical compositions.⁵ In light of this, should we reconsider his song, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”? Is this a racist song? Or could it be a satire, “illustrating Southern white slaveholders’ longing for the past when they were masters and African Americans were under their subjugation”?⁶ Either way, is it wrong to discount a song that was a prominent feature of a man’s career that likely would not have come to fruition if it wasn’t for the popularity of minstrel shows, for better or for worse, blurring the color line and giving blacks the opportunity to participate in American popular culture?

1 McDowell, Joseph Nashe. 1860. “A letter to the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and an address to the legislature of the state of Missouri.” Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Gale. St. Olaf College Libraries. http://find.galegroup.com/sas/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=SAS&userGroupName=mnastolaf&tabID=T001&docPage=article&callistoContentSet=LCPC&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&docId=DS4103086904&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCO&version=1.0&relevancePageBatch=DS103086895&docLevel=FASCIMILE (accessed March 8, 2018).

2 Hischak, Thomas. “‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’ (song, 1878).” The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2018. africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1571989 (accessed March 8, 2018).

3 Erickson, Shannon. “Bland, James A. (1854-1911).” Blackpast.org African American History. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bland-james-1854-1911 (accessed March 8, 2018).

4 Hischak, Thomas. “‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’ (song, 1878).”

5 Erickson, Shannon. “Bland, James A. (1854-1911).”

6 Hischak, Thomas. “‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’ (song, 1878).”