Music Banter - View Single Post - A Concise History of Ragtime
View Single Post
Old 03-08-2014, 02:14 PM   #15 (permalink)
Lord Larehip
Account Disabled
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Posts: 899
Default

By 1830, this began to change. Minstrelsy had begun to be so popular that theatre-owners began to see the advantage of putting various entertainments on the same bill including opera and minstrelsy. While profit was the conscious motive, the underlying subconscious motive was the enforcement of communal codes of conduct. To deny the lower classes anywhere to enjoy their entertainments was courting disaster.

Minstrelsy itself has many roots in communal codes of conduct. We examined mumming plays earlier but another is the Callithumpians that were bands of young White men (usually bachelors) of low social status who marched through town, often in blackface, pounding pots and pans and making a lot of noise. They were popular from the 1820s through the 1840s and so it would seem many of them went over into minstrelsy itself.

One ritual of the Callithumpians that seems to have some tie to the mumming play is the charivari (pronounced “shiv-ar-ree”) where a person was singled out by the group for engaging in behavior considered counter to community standards to be visited at midnight by masked men who would harass and even rough up the person depending on the offense. This was accompanied by a great deal of noise specifically to attract attention in hopes of shaming said offender and warning any other potential offenders into toeing the community line or leaving. This carried over from a medieval German secret society known as the Holy Vehm who also issued warnings and midnight visits to people seen as not doing proper. The Ku Klux Klan also practiced the same thing and not by coincidence.

We also have yet another connection to Santa Claus in the form of Pelznickel. Pelznickel (loosely translated as Nicholas the Punisher) of German lore wore fur and carried both switches and gifts, usually candies and nuts. He wore bells that jingled loudly so that the children could hear him coming (similar to the Callithumpian pot-banging). When he arrived at the house, the parents would open the door and then back away in mock fright. Pelznickel would enter and entice the children to sample the candies and nuts. When the children approached, he would swing at them with the switches. He would seem to know which child was bad and what he or she had done. Then he would make each child promise to be good. At obtaining the promise, he would reward the child with the treats. Afterwards, the parents would offer him food or drink which he would accept before leaving. In this way, the children learn a lesson: be good (that is, adhere to community standards of behavior) and be rewarded and also reward those who enforced these standards for protecting the community (this still carries on today where policemen on duty often receive free food at restaurants or at greatly reduced prices).



The Crossing-the-Line ceremony (or Shellback ceremony) carried on in the U. S. Navy is another ritualistic enforcement of community standards. A month or so before the ship is to cross the Equator, those who have not been initiated will have it reinforced that they are mere “polliwogs” as opposed to a full-fledged “shellback.” During this time, the heaviest shellback on the ship is designated the “Royal Baby” (a form of the Lord of Misrule). He will be surrounded by a cadre of stoutly built shellbacks. The rule is, any polliwog who can touch the Royal Baby is automatically a shellback. For this reason, he is surrounded by big guys who are not going to let any polliwog near him. During this time, the polliwog will be asked repeatedly through the day by shellbacks shouting the question, “What are you?” and he will answer, “I’m a polliwog.” As the ship crosses the Equator, the ceremony begins which involves the initiates donning their scrummiest dungarees (they’ll be thrown away afterwards) and being forced to crawl though garbage, getting hosed off by solid stream, being locked in a pillory and being forced to eat a ladle full of leftover food collected from meals and turned into a sickening stew of sorts, sucking a cherry out of the navel of the Royal Baby with his belly smeared with a thick coat of lard, etc. Finally, the initiate is dunked in water and held under then pulled up and asked (shouting), “What are you?” He will answer that he is a polliwog and will be dunked under again and this is repeated until he finally answers, “I’m a shellback.” At this point, the ceremony ends.

The Shellback ceremony is so important that the Navy records it in the sailor’s service record and he is issued a shellback certificate. A shellback is the envy of sailors who are still polliwogs (a sailor or officer may be in the Navy 15 years or more and still not be a shellback) and he who has this status is, in the vernacular, “a hotshot swingin’ dick.” There is a similar ritual when crossing the Arctic Circle known as the Bluenose ceremony. The object is to pass the hazing to obtain the status of bluenose. Again, this is entered into a sailor’s service record and he receives a certificate (neither female sailors nor officers are exempt from these ceremonies). Again, the purpose of these ceremonies is cohesion of the community. Two sailors who share this special status are seen as less likely to fight, steal from one another, or develop a bad attitude towards the Navy—any of which can destroy morale on a ship which could promote disaster.

Those who doubt that the Royal Baby is a form of the Lord of Misrule need only take a look at the figure below:


This is a detail from Pieter Brueghel’s 1559 masterpiece, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent. Here, the Lord of the Carnival, a form of the Lord of Misrule, is a fat man surrounded by an entourage. Blacks in the West Indies and the United States are very steeped in these traditions. This is also carried on in America at Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) with one man being chosen as the King of the Mardi Gras as well as the ceremony known as John Canoe or John Kooner which was long celebrated in North Carolina and is still celebrated in the West Indies where it appears to have originated although it appears to have roots in both Africa and Europe. As with the mummers, those in the procession of the man chosen to be John Canoe were young bachelors. As with the mummers, some of these men dressed as women (strangely some of the early klansmen in North Carolina also dressed as women during their night-rides).

From these roots, particularly John Canoe, do we finally get to the birth of blackface minstrelsy. When George Washington Dixon performed onstage, he did so as a blackface character known as Zip Coon.


Note that he carries a broom or besom as well as a sword as did the mummers. John Canoe (below) often dressed as a military officer.


John Canoe.


King Zulu Krewe. King of Mardi Gras.


The Pinkster King of New York. In the slave days of New York in the 18th century, a festival started on the Monday after Whit-Sunday and lasted a week. An area was laid out in a rectangle where “dancing and merry-making” took place. A slave named Charley of Pinkster Hill was declared the king of the revelers. He dressed in a military uniform that was mismatched in color and size. After Charley’s death, the festival started to die with him and shut down completely around 1811. Today, it is resurrected for show. It could actually get very ribald. The Pinkster King bears a great resemblance to Zip Coon above.

Minstrelsy got started while Andrew Jackson was in office (1829-1837). During that time, there were a number of Northern Black men that were dandies—men who dressed to the nines and spoke the King’s English. They were mostly looked down upon in white society. Dixon’s Zip Coon was just such a character or rather a lampoon of a Black dandy. In the song called “Ole Zip Coon” he states:

OLE ZIP COON

(3x) O ole Zip Coon he is a larned skoler,
Sings possum up a gum tree an coony in a holler.
(3x) Possum up a gum tree, coony on a stump,
Den over dubble trubble, Zip coon will jump.

Chorus:
O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
O Zip a duden duden duden duden duden day.
O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.

O ist old Suky blue skin, she is in lub wid me
I went the udder arter noon to take a dish ob tea;
What do you tink now, Suky hab for supper,
Why chicken foot an possum heel, widout any butter.

Chorus:

Did you eber see the wild goose, sailing on de ocean,
O de wild goose motion is a berry pretty notion;
Ebry time de wild goose, beckens to de swaller,
You hear him google google google google gollar.

Chorus:

I went down to Sandy Hollar t’other arternoon
And the first man I chanced to meet war ole Zip Coon;
Ole Zip Coon he is a natty scholar,
For he plays upon de Banjo “Coony in de hollar”.

Chorus:

My old Missus she’s mad wid me,
Kase I would’nt go wid her into Tennessee
Massa build him barn and put in de fodder
Twas dis ting and dat ting one ting or odder.

Chorus:

I pose you heard ob de battle New Orleans,
Whar ole Gineral Jackson gib de British beans;
Dare de Yankee boys do de job so slick, creek.
For dey cotch old Packenham an rowed him up de first.

Chorus:

I hab many tings to tork about, but dont know wich come
So here de toast to old Zip Coon before he gin to rust;
May he hab de pretty girls, like de King ob ole,
To sing dis song so many times, ’fore he turn to mole.

Chorus

The song starts off with the typical racist content of the time concerning how Black people in America talked and names as “Suky” who is described as being so black that she’s actually blue (or the other way around). The phrase “O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day” is, of course, the origin of the Walt Disney “Zippity doo dah zippity day” since the Disney song was a medley of old American folk tunes as one can hear the “Davy Crockett” melody in it as well.

The verse that starts off: “Did you eber see the wild goose, sailing on de ocean,
O de wild goose motion is a berry pretty notion” comes from a sailor shanty called “Wild Goose” or “The Wild Goose Shanty” which shanty man A. L. Lloyd sings:

Did you ever see a wild goose sailin’ on the ocean / Ranzo ranzo away away/
It’s just like them young girls when they take a notion / Ranzo ranzo away away

So one can see the various strands that came together to make blackface minstrelsy and it often comprised the lowest occupations and lifestyles—hunting raccoon and possum to eat and sailing whether it be a Navy ship, a merchant or a whaler—none were exactly prestigious—a sailor is a sailor.

Another version of “Zip Coon” that Dixon sang goes:

I tell you what will happen den, now bery soon
De Nited States Bank will be blone to de moon
Dare General Jackson will him lampoon
An de bery nex president will be Zip Coon
An when Zip Coon our president shall be
He make all de little coon sing possum up a tree
O how de little coons will dance and sing
Wen he tie dere tails togedder, cross de limb dey swing
Now mind wat you arter, you tarnel critter Crocket
You shan’t go head widout ol’ Zip, he is de boy to block it
Zip shall be president, Crocket shall be vice
An dey two togedder will hab tings nice


In this version, the notions of honor at this period in American history are being mocked by the character of Zip Coon, the Northern freedman dandy. We can see that these verses equate Jackson with Zip Coon. “De bery nex president will be Zip Coon” who is dressed as a general in a mismatched uniform is compared to Jackson, himself a former general. Jackson had a great appeal to the masses after he termed the aristocracy as “undemocratic.” Yet Jackson was a part of the aristocracy since he was a slaveholder and had killed men in duels over honor—something the common people did not engage in.

“De Nited States Bank will be blone to de moon” refers to Jackson’s dismantling of the Second Bank of the United States which was both constitutional and providing a solid and steady currency. The currency, however, was fiat currency meaning it had no real value on its own except what was assigned to it by law (the U. S. dollar today is fiat currency). Jackson favored “hard money” which meant a gold or silver standard where paper money was a promissory note representing that amount of precious metal. Jackson called the Second Bank corrupt and when the Bank needed its charter renewed by 1836, Jackson vetoed the charter causing the Bank to collapse. This “common” man also aggressively enforced Indian removal and reversed himself in his support of states’ rights when he refused to allow South Carolina to nullify federal law or secede from the Union.

The references to “Crocket” refer to Davy Crockett—the King of the Wild Frontier. Crockett had served in the Tennessee General Assembly and later in the U.S. House of Representatives. He championed the cause of impoverished farmers and settlers. Crockett also opposed Jackson on key issues, especially the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which he termed “a wicked and unjust measure” even though it cost him his reelection because most whites in Tennessee favored it.

What the song is doing is comparing the major players of Jacksonian Democracy (which historians assign a window of 1830-1850) and its opponents to the “Free Negro dandies.” These dandies were seen by society as pretentious, crude men who lack any real knowledge or taste. They are simply beneath the dignity of the class they aspire to and nothing can be done to remedy that. Hence the comedy of the phrase, “O ole Zip Coon he is a larned skoler” in the same sense as saying, “I’se a edjacated man, I is.” Dixon was pointing out the Jacksonian era politicians as being no better and no less comical but the song is also a criticism of how honor is denied to the common white citizen. Dixon was saying, “I’m Zip Coon, you’re Zip Coon, we are all Zip Coon in this day and age.”

And there are yet other versions of the song. This is partly because there was more than one Zip Coon. Besides Dixon, there was Bob Farrell who was probably singing “Ole Zip Coon” by 1833, a year before Dixon, George Nichols billed himself as Zip Coon and a “Mr. Palmer” is mentioned as singing it at Richmond Hill Theatre in New York in March of 1834—the same year and month that Dixon is first cited to have sang it. We are most interested in Dixon because of the socio-political commentary within his songs. Dixon was himself of low birth from Richmond in 1801. At 15, his singing abilities landed him in a traveling circus. He achieved stardom almost overnight with his blackface act at the Bowery Theatre in 1829.




Dixon was not content to be merely “The American Melodist,” “The Buffo Singer” or “Zip Coon.” He had other aspirations and moved to Boston to start up a series of muck-raking scandal sheets, squarely on the side of the working class, that earned him a great many enemies. He then moved to New York and continued his writing career there and, again, gained many enemies and even did stints in jail. But he never gave up the stage either. He continued to perform as Zip Coon and even got into legitimate theatre. His muckraking efforts were squarely in the vein of charivari—accusing a person of some moral offense and inciting some type of retaliation among the readership against the offender. His opponents charged him with everything from petty theft to being a “ni-gger” or “mulatto.” His trials garnered a huge amount of attention and newspaper readers avidly kept up with the latest courtroom dramas.

Even Dixon’s own readership would be angered by some of the things he would print such as his antislavery stance and yet would turn up at his shows and listen to him as Zip Coon leveling the same charges from the stage and cheer him on wildly. This seems to have a shamanistic connection: a shaman was regarded by his or her fellow tribespeople as an ordinary person until they donned the mask of the god and danced into an ecstatic frenzy. Then this person’s utterances were regarded as the utterances of the god—not the person. Dixon’s audiences had the same reaction to him. As the editor of a scandal sheet they hated him, insulted him, reviled him but, in the mask of Zip Coon dancing ecstatically, he became the god whose utterances were received with good humor and applause.

Dixon later turned to long distance walking to raise money. He was known to walk long distances without rest or pause once even covering 30 miles in about five and a half hours. Everywhere he went, he was greeted by crowds. He was his own self-promotion machine and always managed to find a way to stay in the public eye. Yet, by 1861, he had so drifted out of the view of that eye that when he died that year, no major paper—remarkable considering his significant contributions to American culture—bothered to carry his obituary.


Zip Coon - YouTube

Last edited by Lord Larehip; 03-08-2014 at 02:51 PM.
Lord Larehip is offline   Reply With Quote