Description:Black performance in Britain has a long history. As far back as the sixteenth century musicians had a presence in public life, playing at the courts of monarchs and performing as military bandsmen (Fryer 1984.) The nineteenth century was an interesting period in terms of black performance (performances by/or about black people) which made a significant contribution to the cultural life of Birmingham. It was also a time during which the struggle for representation became apparent.
The 1840s had seen the rise of blackface minstrelsy on the British stage and Birmingham too witnessed performances by Americans masquerading as black musicians such as Thomas D Rice's minstrel troupe and Pell’s Ethiopian Serenaders. Blackface minstrelsy was a racist comic theatrical form which employed grotesque caricatures of black people and reinforced these stereotypes in the minds of its audiences. From the 1850s onwards however, performances by genuine black artists were becoming a feature of the city's cultural landscape, giving many theatregoers their first experiences of black people performing and representing themselves. Some have claimed that these performances did not necessarily reflect ‘genuine’ black culture in Britain since they were determined by Western aesthetic tastes and conventions (Pickering 1990.) They did however demonstrate a meeting of different cultural forms in their creative expression; as embodied in the work of William Henry Lane (the renowned black dancer ‘Master Juba’) who performed on the American stage in the 1840s and joined the Ethiopian Serenaders in London where he combined the Irish jig with African-American dance.
Although black musicians did live in the city, it was performers from across the ocean- from the United States- whose performances received the most public attention. Performers like Elizabeth Taylor-Greenfield and the Fisk Jubliee Singers, who received the patronage of society's elite, came to Europe because the continent's more tolerant attitude towards black people provided greater opportunities for work. These artists were well received in Birmingham although part of their attraction was that fact that they were 'black' performers, which intrigued people.
Attitudes towards black performance during the nineteenth century reflected those of wider society and were complex- sympathy and identification with the anti-slavery cause were expressed at the same time that racist attitudes and values were hardening in relation to Empire. The musical theatre of London's Savoy Theatre, which found its way to the Birmingham stage in the 1890s, reflected colonialist attitudes towards other cultures and peoples which again symbolised the wresting of the power of representation out of the hands of black people. Black people were again lampooned but this time by performers from this side of the Atlantic. The notion of Empire provided much fruit for the imagination: thus 'Chinese magician' Chung Ling Soo, photographs of whom can be found in the City Archives, found that an 'exotic' ethnicity could be used to create a distinctive performance and to catch the attention of potential audiences.
It would be during the next century that black performers gradually gained power to represent and express themselves in ways that were more fully directed by their own artistic sensibilities and needs. You can read more about this in the section on 20th century black performers in Birmingham.
The following pages provide an insight into nineteenth century black performance in the city through materials held in Birmingham City Archives.