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African-American Musical Theater
African-American musical theater includes late 19th- and early 20th-century musical theater productions by African Americans in New York City and Chicago. Actors from troupes such as the Lafayette Players also crossed over into film. The Pekin Theatre in Chicago was a popular and influential venue. Various theater actors crossed over into African American cinema. Early history The African Grove Theatre opened in New York City in 1821. It was subjected to harassment and intimidation, eventually closing. Before the late 1890s, the image portrayed of African Americans on Broadway was a "secondhand vision of black life created by European-American performers." Stereotyped "coon songs" were popular, and blackface was common. Minstrel shows were often performed in early history and were inspired by black music. These shows were first performed by white people who used blackface in the 1800s. Many of these performers wore old ripped clothing, some stolen from slaves, to "represen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Theater
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the light opera works of Jacques Offenbach in France, Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and the works of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by Edwardian musica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Origin Of The Cakewalk
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gold Bug
"The Gold-Bug" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe published in 1843. The plot follows William Legrand, who becomes fixated on an unusual gold-colored bug he has discovered. His servant Jupiter fears that Legrand is going insane and goes to Legrand's friend, an unnamed narrator, who agrees to visit his old friend. Legrand pulls the other two into an adventure after deciphering a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure. The story, set on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, is often compared with Poe's "tales of ratiocination" as an early form of detective fiction. Poe became aware of the public's interest in secret writing in 1840 and asked readers to challenge his skills as a code-breaker. He took advantage of the popularity of cryptography as he was writing "The Gold-Bug", and the success of the story centers on one such cryptogram. Modern critics have judged the characterization of Legrand's servant Jupiter as racist, especially because of his diale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Walker (vaudeville)
George Walker (1872 or 1873 – 1911) was an American vaudevillian, actor, and producer. In 1893, in San Francisco, Walker at the age of 20 met Bert Williams, who was a year younger. The two young men became performing partners. Walker and Williams appeared in ''The Gold Bug'' (1895), ''Clorindy'' (1898), ''The Policy Player'' (1899), ''Sons of Ham'' (1900), '' In Dahomey'' (1903), ''Abyssinia'' (1906), and '' Bandanna Land'' (1907). Walker married dancer Ada Overton, who later also was a choreographer. The two men set up an agency, The Williams and Walker Company, to support African-American actors and other performers, create networking, and produce new works. Early life George W. Walker was born in 1873 in Lawrence, Kansas, the son of a policeman and his wife. He began his career as a child performer, touring in black minstrel and medicine shows. George Walker and Bert Williams Walker and Bert Williams became two of the most prominent figures of the minstrel era and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bert Williams
Bert Williams (November 12, 1874 – March 4, 1922) was a Bahamian-born American entertainer, one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. While some sources have credited him as being the first Black man to have a leading role in a film with '' Darktown Jubilee'' in 1914, other sources have credited actor Sam Lucas with this same distinction for a different 1914 film, the World Film Company's ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''. '' Ebony'' stated that "''Darktown Follies'' was the first attempt of an independent film company to star a black actor in a movie", and credited the work as beginning a period in independent American cinema that explored "black themes" within works made for African-American audiences by independent producers. Williams was by far the best-selling Black recording artist before 1920. In 1918, the '' New York Dramatic Mirror'' called Williams "one of the great comedians of the world." W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat Chappelle
Patrick Henry Chappelle (January 7, 1869 – October 21, 1911),Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff''Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz'' University Press of Mississippi, 2009, pp. 248-268.''The New York Age'' November 16, 1911, p. 2. Retrieved July 5, 2014. was an American theatre owner and entrepreneur, who established and ran The Rabbit's Foot Company, a leading traveling show in the first part of the twentieth century. He became known as one of the biggest employers of African Americans in the entertainment industry, with multiple tent tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joe Jordan (musician)
Joseph Taylor Jordan (February 11, 1882 – September 11, 1971) was an American pianist, composer, real estate investor, and music publisher. He wrote over 2000 songs and arranged for notable people such as Florenz Ziegfeld, Orson Welles, Louis Armstrong, Eddie Duchin, Benny Goodman, and others. Early life and education Jordan was born on February 11, 1882, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and received musical training at the Lincoln Institute (now Lincoln University) in Jefferson City, Missouri. Career In 1900, Jordan performed as fiddler and percussionist with the Taborian Band of St. Louis. He also appeared with Tom Turpin, Sam Patterson, and Louis Chauvin in a singing four piano act. In 1902, he went to New York City to collaborate with Ernest Hogan, known in show business as "The Unbleached American". At the beginning of the 20th century, much of the entertainment industry was founded upon the exploitation of ethnic stereotypes. Hogan's bi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Red Moon (Johnson And Cole)
''The Red Moon'' is a musical or operetta in three acts with music by J. Rosamund Johnson and both book and lyrics by Bob Cole. Additional music was contributed by James Reese Europe who composed the song "Sambo" for the show, and co-wrote the song "Ada (My Sweet Potater)" with Cole and lyrics by Charles A. Hunter.Dietz, p. 543 Labeled and marketed by its creators as a "sensation in red and black", the work has been classified variously by theatre scholars as a musical and an operetta.Peterson Jr. 1993, p. 288 The show was created by African Americans and starred an all-Black cast in its original 1908–10 production. The show is regarded as historically important to American theatre because it was the first Broadway show to depict alliances between African Americans and Native Americans. Plot ''The Red Moon'' is set in the fictional town of Swamptown, Virginia, and on an Indian reservation somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The story follows a young half-African-American and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Rabbit's Foot
A, or a, is the first Letter (alphabet), letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''English alphabet#Letter names, a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version is often written in one of two forms: the double-storey and single-storey . The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English, ''English articles, a'' is the indefinite article, with the alternative form ''an''. Name In English, the name of the letter is the ''long A'' sound, pronounced . Its name in most other languages matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables. History The earliest know ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coon Song
Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they were not yet identified with the "coon" epithet. The genre became extremely popular, with white and black men giving performances in blackface and making recordings. Women known as coon shouters also gained popularity in the genre. Rise and fall from popularity Although the word "coon" is now regarded as a racial slur, according to Stuart Flexner, "coon" was short for "raccoon", and it meant a frontier rustic (someone who may wear a coonskin cap) by 1832. By 1840, it also meant a Whig, as the Whig Party was keen to be associated with rural white common people. At that time, "coon" was typically used to refer someone white, and a coon song referred to a Whig song. It was only in 1848 that the first clear case of using "coon" to refer to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Watermelon Stereotype
The watermelon stereotype is an anti-Black racist Trope (literature), trope originating in the Southern United States. It first arose as a backlash against African American End of slavery in the United States of America, emancipation and economic self-sufficiency in the late 1860s. After the American Civil War, in several areas of the South, former slaves grew watermelon on their own land as a cash crop to sell. Thus, for African Americans, watermelons were a symbol of liberation and self-reliance. However, for many in the majority white culture, watermelons embodied and threatened a loss of dominance. Southern White resentment against African Americans led to a politically potent cultural caricature, using the watermelon to disparage African Americans as childish and unclean, among other negative attributes. History The first published caricature of Black people reveling in watermelon is believed to have appeared in ''Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper'' in 1869. The ste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson. Johnson was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934, he was the first African American pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
