The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121919 Message #2667157
Posted By: Gervase
29-Jun-09 - 11:41 AM
Thread Name: Motley Morris banned !
Subject: RE: Motley Morris banned !
The jury does still seem to be out on the racial connotations of blackface morris, and it's not something I feel entirely comfortable about.
My own local Border side, Carreg Las avoids this with black and white face-paint, which makes for a more striking look and avoids ugly connotations of 'nigger minstrels' and the like.
The Ring, the Federation and the Open Morris have issued a joint statement on blackface morris:
"There is a historical tradition in Europe and this country of blacking up while dancing. Steve Corrsin (author of Sword dancing in Europe - A History) came across references from central European sword and Morris sources, to dancers with blacked faces in the 15th-17th centuries, for example, Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire rather than France) and Zurich (a picture from the Zurich city archives, 1578). Whilst historical precedent is no justification for current practice, teams have developed their style in this context, not with the intention of being offensive.
"It is current day practice in other Countries for dancers to blacken or colour their faces as part of the atmosphere of the dance - and in some instances to whiten up.
"Flag Crackers of Craven (a blacked up Border team) have been featured in a national advertising campaign for NFU Mutual, where they are clearly seen as a Morris team dancing with blacked faces. The campaign has been running since October 1996, and was most recently featured in the Radio Times. At the 1st August 1997 the Advertising Standards Authority have received no complaints of people experiencing the photos as offensive."
For me, however, there are too many references to minstrelsy in histories of border morris, and too much borrowing of tunes (like Not for Joe for one) to convince me that it is wholly unconnected with something that would now be unacceptable.