<\/a>
\nI’m reading a strange and often incoherent book by Nick Tosches called Where dead voices gather<\/em>. For all it’s jumping about and disconnected tangents, it’s actually a fascinating take on the minstrelsy of the 1800s and early 1900s, and the transition from minstrelsy and vaudeville to the country and blues are central to what is often called “American roots music”.<\/p>\n

In and amongst all his ramblings I just got to this great quote:<\/p>\n

\nAs to the true origin of the cakewalk, it is believed to have begun at about the same time as minstrelsy, around 1840, with slaves parodying the formal dances of their masters. These burlesques came to be mimicked [by whites] in minstrel shows. After the Civil War, when blacks entered minstrelsy, they assumed parts in the minstrels’ cakewalk. As Terry Waldo puts it in his book This Is Ragtime<\/span>: “By the time the ragtime era began in 1896, the cakewalk was being performed by blacks imitating whites who were imitating blacks who were imitating whites.” I’m sure the gist of this wonderful little observation can, with not much squinting, be applied to the whole of popular culture.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, what wonderful<\/span> stuff. It reminds me of this excellent essay<\/a>, “When wrong is right”, written by Ed Ward as a companion piece to the PBS documentary on John Lennon’s jukebox<\/span><\/a>. In it Ward argues that one of the great strengths of the Beatles’ music was that they tried to copy the American R&B they loved and failed<\/span>. In failing, however, they created new combinations and opened new doors:<\/p>\n

\nThis is what makes artists artists: they take little bits of things from here and there and put them together in unexpected combinations that seem new and original. Some of them are pretty obvious: one of Little Richard’s trademarks is the “Ooooo!” he interjects into a lot of his hit songs. Richard got it from the world of gospel, where it’s a standard of Alex Bradford, among others. The Beatles grabbed this little trick for themselves, and it’s all over their first recordings: girls went wild when Lennon and McCartney stepped up to a single microphone, shook their mop tops, and went “Ooooo!”.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Makes me want to go off and butcher a good song or two… :-)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m reading a strange and often incoherent book by Nick Tosches called Where dead voices gather. For all it’s jumping about and disconnected tangents, it’s actually a fascinating take on the minstrelsy of the 1800s and early 1900s, and the transition from minstrelsy and vaudeville to the country and blues are central to what is … Continue reading “Blacks imitating whites imitating blacks imitating whites”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-music"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-6o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1618,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2012\/11\/05\/how-do-we-wish-to-be-remembered-again-vote-no-tomorrow\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":0},"title":"How do we wish to be remembered (again): Vote No tomorrow","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"5 Nov 12","format":false,"excerpt":"How do we wish to be remembered? Looking back, it can be hard to imagine why people in the past just didn't get it. Why they thought women shouldn't be allowed to vote, and why blacks and whites couldn't use the same restroom, or the same school. The people that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family"","block_context":{"text":"Family","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/family\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8468\/8126649743_da6d5271c9_b.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":680,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/08\/sivs-explained\/","url_meta":{"origin":396,"position":1},"title":"SIVs explained","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"8 Nov 07","format":false,"excerpt":"John Naughton was the first to bring this gem to my attention. This is a hilarious explanation of how modern investment works (or doesn't). 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That doesn't mean he can't still at least one more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}