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.
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.
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