You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Stephen Foster Songs and Minstrel Troupes
Crest
After the Civil War, troupes grew larger, and there were more African American troupes.
Here is one description of American minstrelsy:
The typical entertainment included instrumental numbers, novelty acts (acrobats, characters in animal costumes, dancers, and circus or museum oddities), short skits, opera burlesques, parodies of urban concert life, comic and sentimental songs, and ensemble dance numbers.
Mainstream Genre
James A. Bland, America’s first great African American songwriter (“Carry me back To Old Virginny,” official state song of Virginia), wrote hundreds of songs but did not make any money on royalties. However, he did earn a good living as a member of various minstrel troupes.
Stephen Foster, a northerner, wrote many songs for minstrel shows, with lyrics in dialect that did not mock or denigrate plantation slaves.
In the decades following the Civil War, the racist nature of much of minstrelsy led to its demise, concomitant with the rise of vaudeville, which had taken over from minstrelsy as variety stage entertainment by the first decade of the 20th Century.