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Hokum Blues Songs
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music—a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos. This trope goes back to early blues recordings and is used from time to time in modern American blues and blues rock. An example of hokum lyrics is this sample from "Meat Balls", by Lil Johnson, recorded about 1937: Technique In a general sense, hokum was a style of comedic farce, spoken, sung and spoofed, while masked in both risqué innuendo and "tomfoolery". It is one of the many legacies and techniques of 19th century blackface minstrelsy. Like so many other elements of the minstrel show, stereotypes of racial, ethnic and sexual fools were the stock in trade of hokum. Hokum was stagecraft, gags and routines for embracing farce. It was so broad that there was no mistaking its ludicrousness. Hokum also encompassed dances like the cakewalk and the buzzard lope in skits that unfolded through spoken narrative and song. W. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Minstrels, 1843
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States, Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond, Virginia, Richmond; Virginia Beach, Virginia, Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County, Virginia, Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The area's history begins with Native American tribes in Virginia, several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Five Points, Manhattan
Five Points (or The Five Points) was a 19th-century neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The neighborhood, partly built on low lying land that had filled in the freshwater lake known as the Collect Pond, was generally defined as being bound by Centre Street to the west, the Bowery to the east, Canal Street to the north, and Park Row to the south. The Five Points gained international notoriety as a densely populated, disease-ridden, crime-infested slum that existed for over 70 years. Through the twentieth century, the former Five Points area was gradually redeveloped, with streets changed or closed. The area is now occupied by the Civic Center to the west and south, which includes major federal, state, and city facilities. To the east and north, the former Five Points neighborhood is now part of Manhattan's Chinatown. Name Two crossing streets and a third that ends at their intersection form five corners, or "points". About 1809, Anthony Street was extended east ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skits
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. definition 3b, Merriam-Webster online. Retrieved 5/4/2019 History Sketch comedy has its origins in |
Word Play
Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, double entendres, and telling character names (such as in the play ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', ''Ernest'' being a given name that sounds exactly like the adjective ''earnest''). Word play is quite common in oral cultures as a method of reinforcing meaning. Examples of text-based (orthography, orthographic) word play are found in languages with or without alphabet-based scripts, such as homophonic puns in Mandarin Chinese. Techniques Some techniques often used in word play include interpreting idioms literally and creating contradictions and redundancies, as in Tom Swifties: :"Hurry up and get to the back of the shi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slapstick
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such as saws and ladders. The term arises from a device developed for use in the broad, physical comedy style known as ''commedia dell'arte'' in 16th-century Italy. The "Clapper (musical instrument), slap stick" consists of two thin slats of wood, which make a "slap" when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud—and comical—sound. The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular Punch and Judy puppet show. Other examples of slapstick humor include ''The Naked Gun'' and Mr. Bean (character), Mr. Bean. Origins The name "slapstick" originates from the Italian ''Batacchio'' or ''Bataccio'' – called the "Clapper (musical instrument), slap stick" in English – a club-like objec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reconstruction Era
The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloody Civil War, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and to redress the political, social, and economic legacies of slavery. During the era, Congress abolished slavery, ended the remnants of Confederate secession in the South, and passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (the Reconstruction Amendments) ostensibly guaranteeing the newly freed slaves (freedmen) the same civil rights as those of whites. Following a year of violent attacks against Blacks in the South, in 1866 Congress federalized the protection of civil rights, and placed formerly secessionist states under the control of the U.S. military, requiring ex-Confederate states to adopt guarantees for the civil rights of free ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Dilward
Thomas Dilward (c. 1817–1887) was an entertainer who appeared in blackface minstrel shows from 1853 until the early 1880s under the name Japanese Tommy. He was also sometimes billed as "The African 'Tom Thumb'" and the "African Dwarf Tommy".Andrew Kuntz, "Fiddle Tune History -- Minstrel Tales: Picayune Butler and Japanese Tommy 'Hunky Dory!'" ''Fiddler Magazine'', May 24, 2012. Dilward is one of only two known African-Americans to have performed with white minstrel companies before the (the other being [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance. A dandy could be a self-made man who strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background, especially in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. Previous manifestations of the ''petit-maître'' (French for "small master") and the Muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost, but the modern practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London and in Paris. The dandy cultivated cynical reserve, yet to such extremes that novelist George Meredith, himself no dandy, once defined cynicism as "intellectual dandyism". Some took a more benign view; Thomas Carlyle wrote in ''Sartor Resartus'' that a dandy was no more than "a clothes-wearing man". Honoré de Balzac introduced the perfectly worldly and unmoved Henri de Marsay in '' La fille aux yeux d'or'' (1835), a part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carry Me Back To Old Virginny
"Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" is a song written circa 1878 by James A. Bland (1854–1911), an African-American composer and minstrel performer. It was Virginia's state song from 1940 until 1997. There is some evidence suggesting that it is an adaptation of "Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny" which had been popular since the 1840s and was sung by Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. As Virginia's state song A third reworded version was Virginia's state song from 1940 until 1997, using the word "Virginia" instead of "Virginny." In 1997, it was retired as the state song, largely due to controversy over the lyrics' racial content (such as the narrator being a slave, and referring to himself as a "darkey"). On January 28, 1997, the Virginia Senate voted to designate "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" as state song emeritus and a study committee initiated a contest for writing a new state song. The song was representative of the commonwealth in many ways. "When Clif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camptown Races
"Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races" (popularly known simply as "Camptown Races") is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). () It was published in February 1850 by F. D. Benteen of Baltimore, Maryland, and Benteen published a different version with guitar accompaniment in 1852 under the title "The Celebrated Ethiopian Song/Camptown Races". The song quickly entered the realm of popular Americana. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) quotes the melody in his virtuoso piano work Grotesque Fantasie, the Banjo, op. 15 published in 1855. In 1909, composer Charles Ives incorporated the tune and other vernacular American melodies into his orchestral Symphony No. 2. First stanza Reception Richard Jackson was curator of the Americana Collection at New York Public Library; he writes: Foster quite specifically tailored the song for use on the minstrel stage. He composed it as a piece for solo voice with group interjections and refrain ... his dialect ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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