Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism

Singing was just one element of blues performance in the early twentieth century. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and other classic blues singers also tapped, joked, and flaunted extravagant costumes on tent show and black vaudeville stages. The press even described these women as "actresses" lon...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. Verfasser: McGinley, Paige A. (VerfasserIn)
Format: Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: Durham Duke University Press [2014]
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-739
DE-858
URL des Erstveröffentlichers
Zusammenfassung:Singing was just one element of blues performance in the early twentieth century. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and other classic blues singers also tapped, joked, and flaunted extravagant costumes on tent show and black vaudeville stages. The press even described these women as "actresses" long before they achieved worldwide fame for their musical recordings. In Staging the Blues, Paige A. McGinley shows that even though folklorists, record producers, and festival promoters set the theatricality of early blues aside in favor of notions of authenticity, it remained creatively vibrant throughout the twentieth century. Highlighting performances by Rainey, Smith, Lead Belly, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee in small Mississippi towns, Harlem theaters, and the industrial British North, this pioneering study foregrounds virtuoso blues artists who used the conventions of the theater, including dance, comedy, and costume, to stage black mobility, to challenge narratives of racial authenticity, and to fight for racial and economic justice
Beschreibung:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Nov 2020)
Beschreibung:1 online resource (296 pages) 28 illustrations
ISBN:9780822376316
DOI:10.1515/9780822376316