Unmasking the Minstrel Mask's Black Magic in Ntozake Shange's "spell #7"

Abstract

. the minstrel may be banned as racist / but the minstrel is more powerful in his deformities than our alleged rejection of him,' writes Ntozake Shange in her foreword to spell #7. In the foreword, she reveals that the audience at the original production of the choreopoem at the New York Shakespeare Festival (1979) failed to detect her ironic, critical use of the minstrel tradition; rather, they delighted in and grandly applauded2 the familiar spectacle of the minstrel's singing, dancing, and posing as Al Jolson and Bert Williams. Minstrelsy, then, had not lost its psychic power or its entertainment value for the dominant culture. As Tania Modleski points out, the minstrel tradition is still operative in contemporary Hollywood films.3 If minstrelsy is still a popular form of entertainment, what constitutes the pleasurable appeal of this banned form of theatrical performance?