Melody’s Polyrhythmic Polysemic Possibilities

Abstract

This chapter examines the musical repertoires collected by William Sidney Mount in order to understand early minstrelsy's melodic imagination and polyrhythmic style as well as its creole synthesis. It situates Mount's melodic repertoire within the wider context of contemporaneous rhythm and dance repertoires, including the ongoing resources represented by Anglo-Celtic music and dance; the newer dance-types of the polka, quadrille, and cotillion; and the already-creolized tunes explicitly associated with blackface minstrelsy and New York comic theatricals. The chapter suggests that the black–white exchange of the creole synthesis can be traced in movement vocabularies and that the creole synthesis was as present a factor in dance musicians' tune repertoires as it was in dance rhythms. The contents of Mount's musical collection and recollections provide evidence that he was a major participant in social and dance music making.