Here is the first article.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n This article stood out to me because it seems to be critical of minstrelsy in the first half, but then it quickly shifts to glamourising this \u201cnew\u201d form of minstrel shows, which I think is such an interestingly complicated idea. This article was published on April 12, 1902, in the newspaper <\/span>Portland New Age<\/span><\/i>. The author of this article is unknown so I can\u2019t do that much of a deep dive on them. For the first half of this article, the author states that the death of past minstrel actors signifies the death of the old minstrel shows. At this point, I thought this article is serving some fresh, woke ideas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then, it shifted into sort of an advertisement for this new age minstrel show, and the author said that the old minstrel shows \u201crepresent no class and their programs are a hotch potch of absurdly sentimental drivel and eccentric vaudeville specialties.\u201d The author introduces the new minstrel shows by stating the type of dance, music and instruments that will be there, \u201cThe dances were\u2026 The instruments were the banjo, the fiddle, the bones and the tambourine. The songs were the racy plantation melodies, the jubilee, hymns, \u2026 \u201d all of these were elements of <\/span>African American folksongs<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This is not even the worst part (since they were just being mean to their predecessors), the author went on and said that the old minstrel shows \u201cwas to represent the plantation negro in h This is a poster for a show.\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n This other source is simply a poster of an \u201cold\u201d school minstrel show, since it was posted in 1860, and it shows some names of minstrel actors, programs, as well as the price for entering the theater. On the top of the poster, it shows a bust drawing of an African American person juggling a banjo, a fiddle and a tambourine, which happens to be the instruments mentioned in the article. The poster also referred to the minstrel actors as the \u201cgreat stars,\u201d which rubs me the wrong way. The two sources combined tell a story, a story of appropriation, a story of tears and cries viewed as mockery, and a story of the bloody past in the camouflage of music.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n “Topics Of The Times.”\u00a0Portland New Age<\/em>, 12 Apr. 1902, p. 2.\u00a0Readex: African American Newspapers<\/em>, infoweb.newsbank.com\/apps\/readex\/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image\/v2%3A12B7C68FA2F14448%40EANAAA-12BC5D125B711DB0%402415852-12BA072FF6189A30%401-12E65727248D96F8%40Topics%2BOf%2BThe%2BTimes. Accessed 2 Nov. 2021.<\/p>\n https:\/\/infoweb.newsbank.com\/iw-search\/we\/Evans\/?p_product=EAIX&p_theme=eai&p_nbid=I5CV5ASPMTYzNDA1MjczMTYxNToxOjEzOjE5OS45MS4xODAuOTI&p_action=doc&p_queryname=12&p_docnum=2&p_docref=v2:13D59FCC0F7F54B8@EAIX-154E9B16141D3F08@S245-@1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yeah…CW: Racist language that are quite uncomfortable For today\u2019s blog post, I want to talk about two primary sources that I find interesting. This week, we talked about the origin of African American folk music, and I was thinking to … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2021\/10\/pl_010122021_1657_50442_733-PDF-XChange-Editor-2021_10_12-21_55_04-300x207.jpg\")
<\/a>is native humor and with all his racial peculiarities.\u201d This answers the question I posed earlier: where did the African American folksongs go? The person writing this article as well as those who performed in the shows are the ones answering my question without speaking a word– obviously they appropriated it. It is just nuts to me how they think his new and improved version of minstrelsy is good and worth advertising. But oh wait, it probably has a market.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n