Sheet Music Iconography and Music in the History of Transatlantic Minstrelsy

Abstract

This essay focuses on how aural and visual media intersected with class when, in 1843, blackface performers began to call themselves minstrels. Not merely a rebaptism, this new name marked a rebirth. Whereas blackface was originally a working-class theatrical experience passed on orally from performer to performer and from performer to audience, blackface minstrels sought to reassure the middle classes that they were emulating more sophisticated European musical traditions. What both the covers and the contents of post-1843 blackface sheet music reveal is that these minstrels tried to establish themselves as part of the growing concert tradition in the United States by showcasing their performances as more presentational and less representational. Because blackface relied increasingly on the publishing industry and the visual medium of sheet music, it also began to rely more on the eye, and because sheet music assumes a certain level of literacy and luxury, this reliance on the eye encouraged blackface's growth as a middle-class phenomenon.