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Author Thompson, Katrina Dyonne, author.

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

Publication Info. Urbana [Illinois] : University of Illinois Press, 2014.
©2014

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (257 pages).
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series New Black Studies Series
New Black studies series.
Note Includes index.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents 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 -- --
Summary "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"-- Provided by publisher.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Language Text in English.
Subject Enslaved persons -- Southern States -- Songs and music.
Enslaved persons.
Southern States.
Genre/Form Songs and music.
Subject Enslaved persons -- United States -- Social life and customs.
United States.
Manners and customs.
Race in the theater -- United States -- History.
Race in the theater.
History.
Theater and society -- United States -- History.
Theater and society.
African American dance -- History.
African American dance.
Slavery -- United States -- Justification.
Slavery.
Justification (Christian theology)
Plantation life -- United States.
Plantation life.
Racism in popular culture -- United States -- History.
Racism in popular culture.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
History.
Music.
Electronic books.
Songs.
Songs.
Music.
Other Form: Print version: Thompson, Katrina Dyonne. Ring shout, wheel about : the racial politics of music and dance in North American slavery. Urbana, [Illinois] : University of Illinois Press, ©2014 x, 242 pages New Black studies. 9780252038259
ISBN 9780252096112 (electronic book)
0252096118 (electronic book)
9780252038259
1306980917
9781306980913
0252038258
9780252079832
0252079833