Creolization of American Culture William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy
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Christopher J. Smith is an associate professor and chair of musicology/ethnomusicology and the director of the Vernacular Music Center at the Texas Tech University School of Music. A working musician, he also performs, records, and tours internationally with the medieval music ensemble Altramar and other bands specializing in Irish traditional music and pre-World War II blues and jazz.Irving Lowens Book Award, Society for American Music (SAM), 2015.<br /><br /> "The book is a fascinating journey from the waterways and barns of 19th-century America to the parchment and canvases of Mount and his depictions of our ever-changing landscape. Mr. Smith combines those observations with deep historical and archival research, illuminating the vast multi-ethnic cultural exchange that lies at the heart of what it means to be American." --<i>Rhiannon Giddens, Wall Street Journal</i><br />
"This books provides a new set of roots for minstrelsy, an intriguing look at popular culture in early American among non-elites, and an innovative method of using multiple disciplines and sources, which in many ways should be a model for historians to think about the past from different angles."--<i>Register of the Kentucky Historical Society</i><br /><br />
"This erudite, extensively researched, and persuasively argued study sheds important new lights on the origins (especially music and movement) of American blackface minstrelsy. Highly Recommended."--<i>Choice</i>
<p>"<i>The Creolization of American Culture</i> is heavily dependent on extensive archival research, and. . . . will be invaluable to researchers. . . .It is a pleasure to read a work grounded in primary sources."--<i>Art Libraries Society of North America</i></p>
<p>"A dazzling addition to the literature on American popular music and its history. <i>The Creolization of American Culture</i> is fresh, vital, compelling, and deeply pertinent to understanding a world in which we yet live."--Dale Cockrell, author of <i>Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World</i></p>
<p>"More than just a book about the artist William Sidney Mount, this study is also an interrogation and reinterpretation of the scholarship on minstrelsy, a topic of increasing importance in interpreting American cultural history. This outstanding piece of work advances our understanding of the black-white vernacular music and dance that took place in colonial America and the early republic."--Jeff Todd Titon, author of <i>Early Downhome Blues</i></p>
"Smith broadens an understanding of a vital stage in the development of American vernacular and popular culture and continues 'minstrelsy's rehabilitation' in scholarly research."--<i>Volume !</i>
"Inspired by the work of Lott, Lhamon, and Cockrell, Smith advances an exciting vein of scholarship seeking to recuperate, theorize and historicize one of America's more curious and enduringly relevant cultural moments."--<i>Journal of Folklore Research</i><br /><br /> "In this thoroughly researched and well-documented study, Christopher J. Smith. . . incorporates a dialogue of scholarship on the history of blackface minstrelsy, biographical information on early blackface performers, and musicology and iconography research to offer not only the story of one man, but also a reinterpretation of American culture."--<i>History: Reviews of New Books</i><br /><br /> "The thesis of this book is refreshing, the analysis sparkling, and the argument grounded in the most exacting and superbly supported research. . . . A major contribution to the scholarship."--<i>The Journal of American Culture</i><br /><br /> "<i>An important piece of scholarship that . . . offers significant insights into the development and meaning of blackface minstrelsy."--<i>JWPM</i></i>