Minstrel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Poster for a minstrel show by William H. West , around 1900

As Minstrel (English for "little servant", derived from Ménestrel , a term for medieval minstrels) was a popular 19th-century form of popular music in the United States designated.

Minstrel music began to become popular in the 1830s and broke up into more modern forms of music in the early 20th century. The so-called minstrel shows were originally performed by white entertainment musicians who dyed their faces black ( blackface ) and caricatured the supposed life of African-Americans . They imitated their language to the amusement of a mostly white audience and tried to imitate the African-American way of dancing in an exaggerated way. The music was passed off as African American, but was mostly generic European fiddle music ; an Irish song, for example, is called The Minstrel Boy . She imitated the kind of African American musician who had been taught to play Irish fiddletunes on the plantations and who played them in their own special way.

Especially since the end of the 19th century there were more and more African-American minstrel musicians, most of whom also colored their faces black. Sometimes they were able to circumvent racist performance restrictions because the audience did not even notice that they really had a black person in front of them. The minstrel music influenced the American music of the time, but also bluegrass and country . Many of the Afro-American minstrels also made contributions to an archaic jazz .

Web links

Wiktionary: Menestrel  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Minstrel  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations