Black Voices on Stage: Recovering African American Performances, 1850-1940

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.