Minstrel Shows | African Bluegrass

"If I could have the nigger show back again in its pristine purity,
I should have little use for opera." -- Mark Twain

Blackface performers are, "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens."
-- Frederick Douglass

Minstrelsy evolved from several different American entertainment traditions; the traveling circus, medicine shows, shivaree, Irish dance and music with African syncopated rhythms, musical halls and traveling theatre.

The "father of American minstrelsy" was Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice (1808-60), who in 1828, in a New York City theatre, performed a song-and-dance routine in blackface and tattered clothes. Rice's character was based on a folk trickster persona named Jim Crow that was long popular among black slaves. Rice also adapted and popularized a traditional slave song called Jump Jim Crow.

TD Rice as "Jim Crow" - 1836

Come listen all you galls and boys
I'se jist from Tuckyhoe,
I'm goin to sing a little song,
My name is Jim Crow

Fist on de heel tap,
Den on the toe
Ebry time I weel about
I jump Jim Crow.
Weel about and turn about
En do jus so,
And every time I weel about,
I jump Jim Crow.

His act was an immediate sensation and while continuing to prefect the routine, Rice gained fame and fortune by performing it throughout the U.S. and in England.