Dobro Tenor

Around 1903 when my parent's died to survive, my brother, Andrew, and I began to perform a musical act on the streets of Chattanooga. I sang and my brother accompanied me on the guitar, often in front of the White Elephant Saloon. In 1912, when Clarence my older brother returned to Chattanooga, he persuaded the managers of his troupe, Lonnie and Cora Fisher, to give me an audition. Consequently, I was hired as a dancer with the Moses Stokes Company, to perform in a show that included the Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey. Intriguing rumors surround our meeting—legend has it that Ma Rainey literally kidnapped me, that she and her husband forced me to tour with their show, teaching me in the process how to sing the blues. Some rumors say we had

On Thursday 29th September 2016, we attended a performance of ‘The Woman in Black’ at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, London. It was set in a traditional proscenium arch theatre which is situated on an enclosed street which applies to the horror genre and the idea of isolation. The size of the theatre was alarmingly small with compact seating, creating a sense of claustrophobia, suffocation and lack of escape from ‘The Woman in Black’. The stage seemed diminutive with the curtain, and the minimalistic set with old-fashioned props instantly set a Victorian impression. The minimalism conveyed how the actors could present a play without ostentatious props and keep the focus on themselves. The monochromatic colours of the programme enhance

Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro Life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. Yet the Philadelphia clubwoman… turns up her nose at jazz and all its manifestations—likewise almost anything else distinctly racial…She wants the artist to flatter her, to make the white world believe that all Negroes are as smug as near white in smug as she wants to be. But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist …to change through the hidden force of his art that old whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am Negro—and beautiful.”

The evolution of musical theater in America can be viewed through many lenses. Through the lens of hindsight, it is easy to reflect on the treatment and portrayal of African-Americans in the contextual fruition of live entertainment in the United States. Dating back to the later half to the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, ethnic representation in musical theater underwent a gradual change paralleling a shift in societal opinion toward racial equality. Though by today’s standards, its depiction of African-Americans may seem archaic at best, Show Boat changed the way audiences viewed musical theater through its success as the first show to deal with racial issues in the United States.

While their wives were probably at home tending the children, these men at this club were killing all the dignity and respect that the narrator had at that time. Generally around the 1950s men would sit around old barbershops and tell their "big tales" about how they caught the biggest one yet. Women had their bridge club and also their garden club that kept them busy throughout the day. This was a way for many men to relax after a hard day at work. According to Mack Warren, a local barber in my hometown, he states that "tellin’ tales was more than just a hobby for many men back in the 50’s, it was a way for them to get away from the stresses of everyday life." The pride in them (the people of that era) helped determine the way of the country today. It helped determine the way their children and grandchildren live today. The narrator being black had a hard time realizing what the people there were doing. He was being mocked without him even knowing it. Being black in this time period was very difficult for the narrator because he wasn’t looked upon as much as the white people his same age. This was not the case for some other men. Of course some had to be perverse in some way or fashion. They got their pleasure from scenes such as the woman dancer in "Battle Royal." The men at the "smoker" enjoy this form of entertainment with

‘Black Robe' is the story of a young Jesuit Priest from France who embarks on a religious journey to convert, to Christianity, the Aboriginal tribes of New France. Set primarily in Ontario during the mid 1630's, Father Lafargue travels from Quebec via the Ottawa River to the home of the Huron people in what is now referred to as the Simcoe Region of South Central Ontario. He is aided by a band of Algonquin-speaking people, numbering roughly 20 and a young Frenchman with aspirations of Priesthood in the motherland. Blackrobe offers an intriguing insight into the relationships between the French and the Aboriginals. That being said most of the background for the movie is taken from a massive archive of

Although documentation is fragmented regarding the these circuits, according to Nadine George-Graves, “... scholars... must do more investigative work than is necessary for other topics in order to locate resource materials” (xii). A Black vaudeville evolved among other types of shows, specifically minstrel. However, for artists of this period, it was one of the only means of upward social mobility (Dahl 10). While a few entertainers were able to play on the white circuits, the majority were not, that is, until the Black circuits were developed for a Black audience. The Rabbit Foot Minstrels and Silas Green from New Orleans were early troupes who put on a “real musical experience” in jook joints which is said in an interview by Barry Lee Pearson to J. Otis Williams in his book, Jook

Bert Williams was born on November 12, 1874, in Nassau, Bahamas. After his family faced some economic issues, they moved from California to the Bahamas in 1884 to for better economic opportunities. Living in California is where his fascination with performances began, mainly medicine shows and seeing the magicians, singers, dancers, etc. Williams worked in the genre of the blackface minstrel show, which was one of the key components of a longstanding attempt by white Americans to degrade Americans of African descent. This project involves discovering the significance Bert Williams had on performances during his era. The goal of this paper is to show how incredible of a performer Bert Williams was and how his performances left such a lasting impact to this day. I argue that Bert Williams utilized performance techniques that were identifiable to typical Broadway audiences of the late 1800s to create opportunities for African-American performers to succeed in show business in the United States. He did this by being a black body using dominantly white performance techniques to subversively make white audiences become used to seeing black bodies doing the same things white bodies do on stage. Williams changed the focused the plots of his performances to situations in which any member of the audience could relate to, no matter their race. Additionally, he proved that minstrelsy shows could feature songs about black characters without containing violent and horrific stereotypes. He used his heritage and platform to be a trailblazer in opening opportunities for African-Americans to succeed in show business in the United States.

The same entertainment which we have today was very different in the 1930s. Blacks and whites would not attend the same movies. In some of the white's shows, they painted their faces black and made fun of black people, this was known as “black face.” Black shows were not the same quality as whites. Black people had to perform at their own shows and work at white show as well.

August Wilson’s highly acclaimed play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in the late 1920’s. The main character, Ma Rainey, is an African American blues singer, and she is managed by a white music producer named Irvin. Levee, the youngest of four band members, takes on a surprisingly dominant role in the play. Anyone can open a history text book and learn about the general social issues that were present in the early nineteen hundreds. Wilson takes this history lesson one step further, and shows his readers the affects of these racial issues on a personal level. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom shows how the disrespect and exploitation of young African Americans in the music industry can either lead to empowerment or downfall.

The band was in full swing when the lead singer, Benbow, came out onto the dance floor and really excited the crowd. Sandy heard someone yell out, “High-yallers, draw nigh! Brown-skins, come near! But black gals, stay where you are!” (63, 64). Later, outside the dance, Hughes describes a scene in which: “a mustard-colored man stood near the door quarreling with a black woman. She began to cry and he slapped her full in the mouth, then turned his back and left with a girl of maple-sugar brown” (69). This was Sandy’s first, but would not be his last, exposure to how skin color affected how desirable someone was. His own mother found his father’s lighter skin tone more appealing and, later in his youth; Sandy was exposed to the talk of the men in the barber shop who also shared these views when it came to the women they were interested in (23, 133). Perhaps one of the most painful early demonstrations to Sandy of the importance of skin color occurred when he and his friend, Willie-Mae, set out to attend the opening day of a new amusement park in Stanton. Sandy and Willie-Mae, along with most of the children in Stanton, had looked forward to it with great anticipation. They both dressed their best and arrived at the park gate, excited the day had finally come, only to be turned away because they were not white. Demonstrating further that skin tone was of high importance, Sandy and Willie-Mae

Within popular black music from the early 1900s there was often a duplicitous message, allowing the authors to both entertain their audiences and provide a social critique. In their song, She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, George Walker and Bert Williams tell the story of a young black girl who, after working in a hotel for a richer white woman, takes on the habits and affectations of white folk. While at first this song might appear to simply be making fun of a young girl whose mannerisms have changed, when examined closely it reveals a powerful commentary on the meaning of blackness, specifically in regards to race relations, social progress, and gender. Black performance in the early 1900s, whether it was minstrelsy, vaudevillian, or coon songs, all relied upon the perceived differences of the black lower class. They usually featured white or black actors parodying black persons, with blackface a common trend. However, in She’s Getting More Like the White Folks Every Day, this mimicry is reversed. Rather than a white man taking on black traits, they show a young black girl adopting the mannerisms of her rich, white boss. Instead of using blackness as the primary source of humour, they rely upon a satire of white culture. By showing how unusual the young woman is acting, Williams and Walker impress upon their audience ideas of contrast between lower class black culture, and upper class white culture. Unlike usual themes present in the black and white

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a film that will surely make you want to fall out of your chair laughing, and make you want to get up and dance. This film is an absolute classic. It is hilarious, adventurous, and makes you feel good about yourself. The most unique thing about this film is the main characters break out of jail for the wrong reason, and then go on a wild chase trying to get home. Another unique part about this film is that the main character is currently divorced and wanting to remarry his ex-wife. The film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a classic comedy because it has well-rounded characters, adventure, and a little bit of love.

Based on Stephen King’s horror novel of the same name, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining features hallways filled with butchered daughters, and their guts and blood splashed down the hall. Horror and realism fuel Kubrick’s notoriously disturbing films and The Shining stands clear-cut amongst them. Although in the case of this movie, Kubrick shifts emphasis from visual horror to psychological fear and instills mounting dread from the sequence of disturbing events. Kubrick states, “one of the things that horror stories can do is show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly.” Never falling flat, The Shining provides a psychological horror masterpiece complete with brilliant acting, tight camera angles, haunting score, and unanswered questions.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1962 film directed by Robert Mulligan, and is based on the novel by Harper Lee of the same name. The film stars Gregory Peck (Atticus Finch), Mary Badham (Scout Finch), Phillip Alford (Jem), John Megna (Dill), Robert Duvall (Boo Radley), and Brock Peters (Tom Robinson). To start the film a woman is narrating her childhood in Macomb, Alabama that was "a tired old town even in 1932." She (Scout) recalls that she was six years old that summer. Scout and her brother Jem are fascinated by the neighbors a few door down, particularly Boo Radley, which they share with Dill, a boy visiting town for the summer. The primary plot line for Scout, Jem, and Dill revolves around Boo Radley.