Black Voices on Stage

Recovering African American Performances, 1850–1940

Thomas L. Riis

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9798855809640
  9798855809633
• eBook ISBN:
  9798855809657
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: American Drama

Brings to light many once famous but now overlooked figures of Black musical theater history from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Black Voices on Stage collects ten diverse case studies of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century African American singers and actors—names that have been largely left out of our general music history books—whose lives and performances address questions of race, identity, musical expression, and audience reception. Rediscovering, remembering, and celebrating the public careers of Black entertainers who worked in a period dominated by pernicious stereotypes of blackface minstrelsy illustrates how their achievements still deserve our attention. Although most of the book is devoted to relatively obscure figures who worked outside of minstrelsy, such as Tom Wiggins, Sissieretta Jones, Bob Cole, Will Marion Cook, and others, a final chapter examines how even the career of Paul Robeson (1898–1976)—arguably the most prominent Black voice on stage in the twentieth century—has fallen under a partial shadow. Riis offers new insights into these pioneering performers, restoring their lives and achievements to the rich tapestry of American music.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Remembering and Imagining Black Voices
• Part I. Some Highly Musical People of the Nineteenth Century
• 1 The Cultivated White Tradition and Black Music: A Discussion of Some Articles in J. S. Dwight’s Journal of Music
• 2 The Music and Musicians in Early Productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• 3 Concert Singers, Prima Donnas, and Entertainers: The Changing Status of Black Women Vocalists in the Nineteenth Century
• Part II. Crossing the Color Line at the Turn of the Century
• 4 The Experience and Impact of Black Entertainers in England, 1895–1920
• 5 Bob Cole: His Life and Legacy to Black Musical Theater
• 6 1900–1905: Critical Years for Black Music in Musical Comedies
• 7 Defying Boundaries and Escaping Stereotypes: African American Entertainers in the Late Nineteenth Century
• Part III. Old Themes, New Forms in the Twentieth Century
• 8 How Black Dance Found Its Way into American Musical Theater Before the Harlem Renaissance
• 9 Babes in Arms, Babes in Armor: Hidden Black Voices in an Iconic Film
• 10 Paul Robeson’s Spiritual Voice Before America’s Political Time Warp
• Appendix: American Music Relating to Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover