November 26, 2004
African-American Sheet Music 1850-1920
Image 1 of 6 link
This collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period.
Unlike many other sorts of published works, sheet music can be produced rapidly in response to an event or public interest, and thus is a source of relatively unmediated and unrevised perspectives on quickly changing events and public attitudes. Particularly significant in this collection are the visual depictions of African Americans which provide much information about racial attitudes over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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(lyrics are found on photo-pages of music: "next image")
~A reminder that for most of America's history racism was a fact of everyday life. People who could afford pianos entertained each other for generations with vicious songs disguised as humor. It makes me wonder where did the bile, (the schadenfraude?) and the sense of entitlement based on skin color go? Since the first colonies, white Americans somberly legislated as well as gleefully celebrated their superiority over African-Americans. Who do their grandchildren scapegoat and mock now? What group of people can they acknowledge as their genetic inferiors? Who are todays 'coons' and 'pickininnies'? Do liberals & homosexuals help fill the void? (Does this have something to do with America's militarism and criminal justice systems?)
Posted by Cieciel at November 26, 2004 03:25 PM