Cole, R orcid.org/0000-0001-6281-3099 (2020) Mastery and Masquerade in the Transatlantic Blues Revival. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143 (1). pp. 173-210. ISSN 0269-0403
Abstract
Focusing on two influential broadcasts staged for British television in 1963–4, this article traces transatlantic attitudes towards blues music in order to explore the constitutive relationship between race, spectatorship and performativity. During these programmes, I claim, a form of mythic history is translated into racial nature. Ultimately, I argue that blues revivalism coerced African American musicians into assuming the mask of blackface minstrelsy – an active personification of difference driven by a lucrative fantasy on the terms of white demand. I ask why this imagery found such zealous adherents among post-war youth, situating their gaze within a longer tradition of colonialist display. Subaltern musicians caught within this regime were nonetheless able to ‘speak’ via sung performances that signified on the coordinates of their own marginalization. The challenge for musicology is thus to heed the relational syncretism arising from intercultural contact while acknowledging the lived experience of African American artists unable fully to evade the preordained mask of alterity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Music (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 May 2023 14:23 |
Last Modified: | 10 May 2023 14:23 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/02690403.2018.1434352 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:185617 |