Robert
I have always believed that the 'popular' representation of Negro speech was
created by White authors and had stemmed from the publication of works like
'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852), the 'plantation' songs
of Stephen C Foster (1826-1864) and the Christy Minstrels (you have already
noted that 'Nelly Bly' is one of these), and continued by the Uncle Remus
stories of Joel Chandler Harris (1870s); etc. etc. All of these were very
popular on both sides of the Atlantic. By the 1890s plantation songs and
Negro spirituals in Negro English were appearing in most British, as well as
American, college and other song-books, and continued in such collections
until the 1980s.
It is worth noting that the words of the songs of the Fisk University
Jubilee Singers (established 1871) appear to be written in standard Southern
American English, which uses 'ain't' instead of 'isn't', but even in some
songs 'going' becomes 'gwine' and 'master' 'massa' as in 'Gwine to meet my
massa Jesus' (song 14, 'Gwine to Ride up in the Chariot').
Jeffrey Green's article 'Minstrelsy' in the Oxford Companion to Black
British History dates minstrel singing by blacked-up white performers as
beginning about 1850, and Maurice Willson Disher notes that 'Ethiopian
serenaders strummed and harmonized in theatres and pleasure gardens
everywhere from Vauxhall to Washington in mid-nineteenth century' (Victorian
Song from Dive to Drawing Room (London: Phoenix House, 1955, p. 175)).
Earlier Black performers at Vauxhall and elsewhere seem to have been
instrumentalists, dancers and acrobats rather than singers (Gretchen
Gerzina, Black London (Rutgers UP, 1995, p. 15))
Or am I on the wrong tack entirely? Someone else may know.
Peter
Peter B Freshwater, MA, DipLib, FSA Scot
43 Corstorphine Road, Edinburgh EH12 5QQ, Scotland
Tel: 0044 (0)131 337 7049
Email: [log in to unmask]
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