The Early Show

Canyon Group Pink Ribbon Spa Wrap - Seen on CBS' The Early Show
$68.00
One size.

The Early Minstrel Show
$17.99
White Blackface minstrelsy (when Black minstrelsy emerged after the civil war it was another question) was one of the first popular musics to go multinational, spreading at its inception in the 1840s to Britain, Ireland, and other English speaking countries. It was a combination of the racist views European Americans and Europeans had to Black people with a large order of Black music thrown in. It was where the banjo ceased to be a private instrument played among Black folks for Black folks, and became an instrument played by the non-Black. It is where the banjo went from being known as an African instrument played by African origined people in the Caribbean and its environs like the US to being misidentified as an African instrument.

There is very much we have learned about the origins of African American and European American banjo playing from players on this album who are also scholars who went back to the minstrel tutors and musical manuscripts and revived this music. Most of the early minstrel banjoists made no secret that they derived their banjo styles from African Americans or from folk taught banjo by African Americans. These people brought the music to life and in doing so opened doors that have lead us to understand the akonting and other African instruments that prefigured the banjo.

At the same time, I find the African and African American aspects of minstrelsy to be overemphasized these days. Even in these reproductions of early minstrel material, you also see a lot of very purely European and European American music with much less trace of African and African American influence than contemporary European American banjo and string band music. This is part of the real interest of this music, as well as whatever trace it provides of Black banjo styles that the minstrels copied.

Curious George and the Dog Show: An Early Reader (Curious George Early Readers)
$3.99
I love all the curious George books. Who Doesn't?

author of "Hobo Finds A Home"