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Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897

Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897

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Availability:In StockContributor:Cheryl ThompsonPublish date:2025-04-22Pages:312
Language:EnglishPublisher:Wilfrid Laurier University PressISBN-13:9781771126540ISBN-10:177112654XUPC:9781771126540Book Category:Social Science, History, MusicBook Subcategory:Race & Ethnic Relations, African American & Black, History & CriticismSize:8.90 x 5.90 x 0.90 inchesWeight:1.1001Product ID:SCY7B1KSPK

Canada and the Blackface Atlantic traces the origins of theatre, dance, and concert singing in Canada and their connection to British and American song and dance traditions.

When theatrical acts first appeared in the late eighteenth century, chattel slavery had transformed into mass entertainment on minstrel stages across the Atlantic world. As railroads and theatres were built, local blackface troupes emerged alongside touring British and American acts. By the 1850s, blackface theatre could be found in remote Western outposts to stages in Central and Maritime Canada. This is one of the first books to connect the rise of Canadian blackface minstrelsy with the emergence of Black singers, and choral groups. It describes how Black performers who assumed minstrelsy's mask remapped plantation slavery on Canadian stages.

It begins with the conflicts that shaped North America - the American Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. Next, it connects these origins with eighteenth-century British immigration, which brought folk dances and masking traditions to North America. From there, it unmasks when and how "Jim Crow" became an Atlantic world sensation, which set the stage for blackface to expand. Finally, it considers how Black acts reimagined the parameters of their own freedom.
Language:EnglishPublisher:Wilfrid Laurier University PressISBN-13:9781771126540ISBN-10:177112654XUPC:9781771126540Book Category:Social Science, History, MusicBook Subcategory:Race & Ethnic Relations, African American & Black, History & CriticismSize:8.90 x 5.90 x 0.90 inchesWeight:1.1001Product ID:SCY7B1KSPK
Cheryl Thompson ​is Canada Research Chair in Black Expressive Culture and Creativity​​​ at ​​Toronto Metropolitan University and director of Mapping Ontario's Black Archives (MOBA). She is the author of Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty (2021) and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture (2019).
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Contributor(s)

Cheryl Thompson

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