Part 17: Mummers' Day -- A Whitewash?

As outrageous as those lyrics seem now, the reality wasn't so black and white in Foster's day.

The famous African American abolitionist (and former slave), Frederick Douglass, cited songs like "Uncle Ned" and "My Old Kentucky Home" as "allies" in the fight against slavery: "They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish."

In Britain, "Uncle Ned" was a standard in school songbooks well into the 20th century. One Padstonian told me that the Darkie Day songs were taught at the local primary school in the Seventies, and possibly even as late as the Eighties, including a tune called "Little Nigger."

Seeing that I wasn't familiar with the song, he recited the words, penned by an anonymous author:

I 'ad a little nigger
He wouldn't grow no bigger
So I put 'im in the wilebeest show.

What? Surely I'd misheard him. "Wilebeest? Like 'wild beast'?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. "Of course, there's all different verses. We don't sing the whole song. 'Cause ya know we 'ad problems. So wherever we've got the word 'nigger' we now change it to 'mummer'." He grinned. "So then we're politically correct."

"So what do you make of that?"

"Welllll… when you're drunk, who can tell what you're singing?"

* * *

©J.R. Daeschner

Like what you've read?

You can buy True Brits here.

Part 16: Eminem and the Coon Carnival

In hindsight, it's clear that all minstrelsy played on and perpetuated outdated and even repugnant stereotypes about blacks.

As in the early days of the genre, though, I think that Darkie Day in Padstow was literally a way of adding some colour to people's plain-vanilla lives.

The burnt cork on their faces acted as a mask that freed them from their daily routine, allowing them to sing, dance and cavort during the holidays without any malice intended toward blacks.

And before rushing to judge Darkie Day or indeed blackface performers of the past, it's worth keeping in mind that future generations may look back on our era and view white stars ranging from Elvis and the Beatles to "blue-eyed soul" singers, white rappers and any number of boy bands as little more than minstrels without the makeup: singers and songwriters who have copied black American slang, diction, dress and singing styles to produce the most commercial music of our time.

Eminem boasted as much in his #1 single, "Without Me" (from The Eminem Show, 2002), bragging that he and Elvis had enriched themselves by exploiting black music.

But if a black man also profits from the exploitation, that makes it okay, right?
Right?

Although modern pop may not mock blacks in the same way as the old minstrel shows, the deeper issue of exploitation remains.

In its own unique way, Darkie Day represents a variety of traditions come full circle: Old World customs were exported to the New World and mixed with plantation-style music to create blackface minstrelsy, which was then exported to Britain at the same time as blacks developed white-face counterparts in the British West Indies.

A similar phenomenon occurred in South Africa, where to this day "Coloureds" imitate old-time American minstrel performers during their annual New Year's celebrations in Cape Town.

The mixed-race revellers, many wearing black-and-white minstrel makeup, have stubbornly resisted attempts to rebrand their hootenanny as the Cape Minstrels Carnival. Instead, they call it by its old-fashioned name—the Coon Carnival.

Likewise, Darkie Day clings to its controversial roots.

The soundtrack for the day kicks off with the lyrics "Oh, I just come out before you / To sing you a Darkie song", then samples snippets of half a dozen ditties, such as "Polly Wolly Doodle".

One of the most contentious verses comes from an international hit by Stephen Foster, "Uncle Ned":

On a cold and frosty morning my Uncle Neddy died,
And he died many years ago.
He had no woolly on the toppy of his head
In the place where the woolly ought to go.
Up with the shovel and a ee-aye-oh
And down with the shovel and the hoe.
There's no more work for the poor old man
He's gone where the good niggerrrs go, aye oh
He's gone where the good niggerrrs go.

©J.R. Daeschner

Like what you've read?

You can buy True Brits here.

Part 15: The First Bona Fide Show Business

After Jim Crow's transatlantic success, minstrelsy quickly became commercialised.

Stephen Foster made his name writing minstrel songs and became the first composer to receive royalties for hits like "Oh! Susanna" and "Camptown Races".

One-man blackface performances turned into blockbuster Minstrel Shows, arguably the first bona fide "show business"—and a major influence on American vaudeville and British music hall traditions.

Like the manufactured pop bands of today, managers and agents put together troupes of performers to tour internationally, rebranding them as "Minstrels" to make them more respectable (akin to the highbrow European acts that were touring the States at the time, such as The German Minstrels).

The Virginia Minstrels, formed in 1843, advertised their shows as "concerts" and promised that they would be "entirely exempt from the vulgarities and other objectionable features, which have hitherto characterized negro extravaganzas".

Whereas the original minstrels hoofed and hollered on the same stages as blacks in mixed ghettoes, their imitators headlined at uptown theatres where blacks were barred. America's showbiz minstrels tended to reinforce black stereotypes by depicting them as stupid, violent and oversexed.

"Nigger minstrel" troupes also made the rounds in Britain, overlapping in some areas with homegrown customs like mumming: a group called The Gowongo Minstrels performed in Padstow just after Boxing Day in 1899, and the first known photo of Padstow's Darkies dates from around the same time.

Nine men and boys pose in front of a stone cottage with accordions, tambourines and drums, dressed like dandified Negroes, sporting tall top hats, frilly collars, oversized buttons and crazy-colour formalwear—and, of course, tar-black faces. At least one man in the picture is a forebear of a current Darkie.

Professional minstrel shows had all but died out in America by the time Al Jolson bawled for his "Mammy" in the 1930 film of the same name (which also featured the song "Yes, We Have No Bananas").

In Britain, however, minstrels remained incredibly popular right up until only a few decades ago.

Unbelievably, The Black and White Minstrel Show ran on TV for more than two decades. In its prime, the variety show won the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux and pulled in 16 to 18 million viewers—roughly one out of every four Britons.

In 1969, the stage version of the show at London's Victoria Palace Theatre broke box office records. To put that into perspective, that same year in the West End, the hippie musical Hair was still shocking audiences with its famous nude scene and songs about peace, love and racial harmony.

The Black and White Minstrel Show didn't cakewalk off the air until 1978, and it had millions of fans right to the bitter end.

Even now, a quick search on the Web pulls up all kinds of nostalgic recollections about the programme and protestations that it wasn't really racist at all, and many performers still have the show on their CVs.

For instance, though he'd probably rather forget it now, Lenny Henry—St. Lenny of Red Nose, CBE—toured with the Black and White Minstrels during the Seventies.

In between jokes, he would wipe the sweat from his face and say it tasted like chocolate.

©J.R. Daeschner

Like what you've read?

You can buy True Brits here.

Part 14: Kwanzaa's Link to Darkie Day

Inevitably, European and African customs intermingled on the plantations of the British West Indies and the American South.

Slaves were allowed time off over Christmas, and they celebrated with processions centred on the towering figure of "John Canoe" or "Jonkonnu"—a man in a tall mask and outlandish clothes.

"John Canoe" may have been a corruption of an African word for "witch doctor", but many celebrations also featured quotes from Shakespeare or characters from European mumming plays.

Sometimes John Canoe and his followers would dress in rags and animal skins; other times, they would poke fun at their masters by wearing fancy European dress—and white makeup with pink Caucasian features.

Jonkonnu extravaganzas still take place in Jamaica and the Bahamas around Christmas and New Year's, though they died out in America after the Civil War.

Meanwhile, Kwanzaa, the US holiday invented during the Black Power movement of the 1960s, runs from December 26th until January 1st, supposedly taking its inspiration from "first-fruits celebrations in ancient Africa".

 

Ironically, though, it coincides precisely with the beginning and end of Padstow's Darkie Days.

In our era, minstrel singers from Jim Crow to Al Jolson tend to be tarred with the same "racist" brush, but connoisseurs increasingly divide minstrelsy into two eras.

As with many creative genres, they distinguish between the movement's pioneers—who often bucked society's norms—and the opportunists who followed, cashing in on the craze by pandering to people's expectations.

Whereas the upper classes viewed Jim Crow and Zip Coon essentially as "niggers" good for a laugh, working-class folks seemed to think they weren't that different from themselves.

The low-rent neighbourhoods of New York and other Northern cities were surprisingly integrated, with whites and blacks singing "Jim Crow" and "Zip Coon" as part of their shared street culture (not unlike rap and hip hop today, which are also notorious for their use of the "n-word").

Paradoxically, both Rice and Dixon spoke out against slavery as their alter egos. After returning to America from his first trip to Britain, which had abolished slavery a few years earlier, Rice added a new verse to "Jim Crow":

De country for me
Is de country whar de people
Hab make poor nigga free.

Given this stance, it's more than a little ironic that the term "Jim Crow" is now most commonly associated with racial segregation laws in the American South.

©J.R. Daeschner

Like what you've read?

You can buy True Brits here.

Part 13: A Filthy Abortion of a Song

However, it wasn't until Rice took his impersonation of a "Kentucky cornfield negro" to New York in 1832 that Jim Crow really began to take flight.

The boys of the Bowery Theater—a venue so rough the patrons often ended up onstage with the actors—demanded Rice do his Jim Crow shtick 20 times a night.

And after conquering the US, Jim Crow jumped the pond in 1836 to begin a yearlong tour of the British Isles, plus a stint in Paris.

Middlebrow critics denounced Rice's "buffo negro songs" as no-class "balderdash": "America has sent us a filthy abortion of a song, with neither talent nor humour," sniffed The London Satirist.

However, Rice found a much wider audience in Britain than America, where his fans were mainly working-class.

"In London, Jim Crow is even more popular than in New York," wrote one US correspondent. "It is heard in every circle, from the soirees of the nobility to the hovels of the street sweepers."

Even a hardened satirist like Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair, confessed that minstrel music "moistened (his) spectacles in a most unexpected manner".

Rice made a fortune, married the daughter of a London theatre owner and returned for two more tours of the UK. (To this day, the British Library has one of the most extensive collections of Jim Crow plays in the world.)

"English audiences were in a special position to appreciate minstrelsy: in many ways, it simply brought images, symbols and forms back home," writes American musicologist Dale Cockrell in Demons of Disorder, his study of early blackface performers.

New World minstrels combined the music, masking and drama of traditions like "guising" and mumming that had been imported from the Old World.

Between Christmas and New Year's, folks around Britain—including Cornwall—would "disguise" themselves by blacking their faces and singing, dancing and performing for food or money during the holidays.

An English mummers' play from 1771 even features a black-faced character called Sambo.

Meanwhile, in New England, bands of "callithumpian" rabble-rousers would parade through the streets on New Year's with chimney soot on their faces, banging pots and drums and naming and shaming anyone they didn't like.

In the Old World, this ritual of social commentary was known as charivari, combining abuse and good humour. In fact, Punch, the famous satirical magazine, was originally subtitled The London Charivari.