1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786793803321

Autore

Thompson Katrina Dyonne

Titolo

Ring shout, wheel about : the racial politics of music and dance in North American slavery / / Katrina Dyonne Thompson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Urbana, [Illinois] : , : University of Illinois Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-252-09611-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (257 p.)

Collana

New Black Studies Series

Classificazione

SOC001000PER003000HIS036040

Disciplina

390/.250973

Soggetti

Enslaved persons - Southern States

Enslaved persons - United States - Social life and customs

Race in the theater - United States - History

Theater and society - United States - History

African American dance - History

Slavery - United States - Justification

Plantation life - United States

Racism in popular culture - United States - History

Racism against Black people

Blackface

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The script : "Africa was but a blank canvas for Europe's imagination" -- Casting : "They sang their home-songs, and danced, each with his free foot slapping the deck" -- Onstage : "Dance you damned niggers, dance" -- Backstage : "White folks do as they please, and the darkies do as they can" -- Advertisement : "Dancing through the Streets and act lively"  -- Same script, different actors : "Eb'ry time I weel about, I jump Jim Crow" -- Epilogue : the show must go on--

Sommario/riassunto

"In this ambitious project, historian Katrina Thompson examines the conceptualization and staging of race through the performance, sometimes coerced, of black dance from the slave ship to the minstrel stage. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, Thompson explicates how black musical performance was used by white Europeans and



Americans to justify enslavement, perpetuate the existing racial hierarchy, and mask the brutality of the domestic slave trade. Whether on slave ships, at the auction block, or on plantations, whites often used coerced performances to oppress and demean the enslaved.  As Thompson shows, however, blacks' "backstage" use of musical performance often served quite a different purpose. Through creolization and other means, enslaved people preserved some native musical and dance traditions and invented or adopted new traditions that built community and even aided rebellion.  Thompson shows how these traditions evolved into nineteenth-century minstrelsy and, ultimately, raises the question of whether today's mass media performances and depictions of African Americans are so very far removed from their troublesome roots"--