Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780822357452)

Singing was just one element of blues performance in the early twentieth century. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and other classic blues singers also tapped, joked, and flaunted extravagant costumes on tent show and black vaudeville stages. The press even described these women as "actresses" long before they achieved worldwide fame for their musical recordings. In Staging the Blues, Paige A. McGinley shows that even though folklorists, record producers, and festival promoters set the theatricality of early blues aside in favor of notions of authenticity, it remained creatively vibrant throughout the twentieth century. Highlighting performances by Rainey, Smith, Lead Belly, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee in small Mississippi towns, Harlem theaters, and the industrial British North, this pioneering study foregrounds virtuoso blues artists who used the conventions of the theater, including dance, comedy, and costume, to stage black mobility, to challenge narratives of racial authenticity, and to fight for racial and economic justice.


Author: Paige A. McGinley
ISBN-10: 0822357453
ISBN-13: 9780822357452
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/10/2014
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2015 pg. 1504
Library Journal 09/15/2014