A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and have been a part of gay culture.
Blackface is the practice of non-Black performers using burnt cork or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of Black people on stage or in entertainment.
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was an American performer and playwright who performed in blackface and used African American vernacular speech, song and dance to become one of the most popular minstrel show entertainers of his time. He is considered the "father of American minstrelsy". His act drew on aspects of African American culture and popularized them with a national, and later international, audience.
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.
Yodeling is a form of singing which involves repeated and rapid changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register and the high-pitch head register or falsetto. The English word yodel is derived from the German word jodeln, meaning "to utter the syllable jo". This vocal technique is used in many cultures worldwide. Recent scientific research concerning yodeling and non-Western cultures has shown that music and speech evolved from a common prosodic precursor.
Shoo-fly pie is a type of American pie made with molasses associated with Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine. While shoo-fly pie has been a staple of Moravian, Mennonite, and Amish foodways, there is scant evidence concerning its origins, and most of the folktales concerning the pie are legendary, including the persistent legend that the name comes from flies being attracted to the sweet filling.
Daniel Decatur Emmett was an American composer, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie".
"Jimmy Crack Corn" or "Blue-Tail Fly" is an American song which first became popular during the rise of blackface minstrelsy in the 1840s through performances by the Virginia Minstrels. It regained currency as a folk song in the 1940s at the beginning of the American folk music revival and has since become a popular children's song. Over the years, several variants have appeared.
"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a song about the Southern United States first made in 1859. It is one of the most distinctively Southern musical products of the 19th century. It was not a folk song at its creation, but it has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely rooted the word "Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the Southern U.S.
Sam Lucas was an American actor, comedian, singer, and songwriter. Sam Lucas's exact date of birth is disputed. Lucas's year of birth, to freed former slaves, has also been cited as 1839, 1841, 1848 and 1850.
"Clare de Kitchen" is an American song from the blackface minstrel tradition. It dates to 1832, when blackface performers such as George Nichols, Thomas D. Rice, and George Washington Dixon began to sing it. These performers and American writers such as T. Allston Brown traced the song's origins to black riverboatsmen. "Clare de Kitchen" became very popular, and performers sometimes sang the lyrics of "Blue Tail Fly" to its tune.
Luke Schoolcraft was an American minstrel music composer and performer. He appeared in numerous minstrel shows throughout the North after the American Civil War.
Barney Fagan was an American performer, director, choreographer, and composer.
Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me or Shew! fly, don't bother me is a minstrel show song from the 1860s that has remained popular since that time. It was sung by soldiers during the Spanish–American War of 1898, when flies and the yellow fever mosquito were a serious enemy. Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album Join Bing and Sing Along (1959). Today, it is commonly sung by children, and has been recorded on many children's records, including Disney Children's Favorite Songs 3, performed by Larry Groce and the Disneyland Children's Sing-Along Chorus.
Thomas Brigham Bishop is best known as an American composer of popular music. Various disputed claims have been made by Bishop and others that he authored, or at least contributed to the authorship of, a number of popular 19th-century songs, including John Brown's Body, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, and Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me. Bishop later had an infamous career as a bucket shop proprietor, among other schemes.
Annie Hindle was the first popular male impersonator performer in the United States. Born in the 1840s in England, she and her adoptive mother, Ann Hindle, migrated to New York City in 1868. Hall performed as a male impersonator in solo acts and in minstrel shows from 1868 to 1886.
The Jim Crow persona is a theater character developed by entertainer Thomas D. Rice (1808–1860) and popularized through his minstrel shows. The character is a racist depiction of African-Americans and of their culture. Rice based the character on a folk trickster named Jim Crow that had long been popular among black slaves. Rice also adapted and popularized a traditional slave song called "Jump Jim Crow" (1828).
James Unsworth was an English blackface comedian, banjo player and songwriter, who performed in Britain, Canada and the United States.
