Lhamon reconstructs the hidden history of public dance, musical fusion, Jim Crow, and racial identity (& transgression) in antebellum U.S. cities, then traces it forward into the 20th century:
Category: Historical
Banjo History Videos
Here are some videos on banjo history, noting especially the early banjo’s roots in Africa and the Caribbean: Akonting Roundtable Segment One: The History and Music of the Akonting
Cockrell: Demons of Disorder (1997)
by Dale Cockrell … A riveting analysis of unconventional texts from the first two decades of minstrelsy.
Lott: Love & Theft (1993)
“For over two centuries, America has celebrated the very black culture it attempts to control and repress, and nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the strange practice of blackface performance. Born of extreme racial and class conflicts, the blackface minstrel show sometimes served to usefully intensify these conflicts. Based on the appropriation of…
Mahar: Behind the Burnt Cork Mask (1999)
Mahar’s survey of early minstrel materials delineates the complex cultural turbulence of the antebellum era:
The Hardtacks 