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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,going on about pheasants Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:49 AM Crossed. There, you see. I bet that's a post from an innocent pheasant feather wearer being forced to get all defensive. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,going on about pheasants Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:44 AM The analogy is that if someone has a "bee in their bonnet" about something (blood sports or minstrelsy) they can choose to pick on an innocent part of someone's "kit" and make a fuss about it whether there is a connection or not. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST, Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:42 AM "large numbers of the birds are bred and released to become road kill so that rich folks can kill them for fun" They become "road kill" when they are hit and killed by vehicles on a road. Killing them once they are dead wouldn't really be much "fun". Yes, pheasants are bred and released for rich people to shoot at, but it is still quite possible to find feathers without any deliberate killing involved (some may die of natural causes, and some will be killed by foxes, who may or may not then eat them, but who also don't usually eat the feathers). |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:40 AM If it's about reviving and celebrating age old traditions, why not consider ditching the tatty costumes and 'black up', and instead opt for more authentic full on ferocious woad decorated naked bodies. Now that'd be a morris side for the 21st century...... |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Howard Jones Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:32 AM I think Jack is being deliberately provocative when he refers to 'blackface' morris. 'Blackface' is a particular form of blacking up which is intended to perpetuate racial stereotypes and is typified by minstrelsy. I've never seen a morris side blacked up in a style which resembles blackface or which perpetuates a racial stereotype (unless that stereotype is of slightly overweight white men with beards). Since it is more than 35 years since the Black and White Minstrel show was last broadcast, and it was a bizarre anachronism even then, surely when seeing someone blacked up today the association should be with morris, rather than minstrelsy? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:20 AM I was more thinking that wearing the feathers could be regarded as supporting a situation where large numbers of the birds are bred and released to become road kill so that rich folks can kill them for fun. Could be regarded by some people, that is. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Bounty Hound Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:18 AM 'I would have thought it was self-evident, BH' Nope, nothing self-evident, or anything in your post that actually answers the question Jack. Just to remind you, as you state clearly that a blacked up morris dancer is racist, I asked you to explain precisely why a morris man in full kit, with a painted face is in any way demeaning to someone of a different ethnic origin or skin colour? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Jack Blandiver Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:06 AM I accept that no pheasants are intentionally harmed in the creation of a morris-person's kit; I doubt they have that close a relationship with their ecology, heritage or environment. This is faux culture as random road-kill; one would hope they'd have more respect for this once noble & beautiful bird than to use its plumage in their folksy fancy dress ball. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 15 Oct 14 - 09:01 AM At election time, the young skinheads in the hostel flats on our street prominently displayed B*P posters in their windows, in direct veiw of the young black family opposite. This is their right to freedom of political expression. I daresay these young skins would be amongst the first to volunter to march in protest and support for the traditional rights of morris teams to wear black faces...??? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:52 AM Pheasants have to die to be eaten. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,as at 14 Oct 14 - 03:33 PM Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:49 AM In the multicultural UK is seems to be generally accepted that within certain bounds of decency we can appear in public dressed and with our bodies decorated as we choose. This sometimes involves tolerating things that we are, reasonably or not, uncomfortable about. If no-one can show that blacked up dancers are intending to cause offence then not letting them be could be seen as the thin end of a wedge. Blacking of hands would concern me. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST, topsie Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:34 AM "Pheasants have to die to decorate those hats ..." I doubt if anyone ever killed a pheasant just to get the feathers. Pheasants may be killed and then eaten, but you don't eat the feathers, they are merely removed before cooking the bird. Also, birds naturally moult and shed feathers, so they can be obtained without any killing involved. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Jack Blandiver Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:23 AM Tell me precisely how a morris man, dressing up in a tatter jacket, putting heavy boots and bell pads on, wearing a hat decorated with flowers and feathers, and painiting their face is in ANY WAY demeaning to someone of a different ethnic origin or skin colour? As I said, the face paint is just part of the kit! Perhaps putting feathers in their hat is also indicative of them having issues with pheasants! I would have thought it was self-evident, BH. Ultimately it's all about individuality, being what you are, being proud of what you are and living to engender a sense of pride in others and being proud of them too. Soon as you have to invent an excuse to black-up your face, you're entering the murky world of fakelore, in which all sorts of justifications are made as why some middle-class middle-aged morris person would want to black up their faces, none of which is of any immediate cultural or traditional relevance to that individual - unlike a chimney sweep, a coalman or a member of the SAS on night patrol, all of whom have clear, obvious and self-evidently non-racist reasons for having a black face. Just as your Aboriginal tribes-person has for painting their faces with white clay (though even if it was for racial reasons I'd think they more than justified in doing so). The blacked-up morris person has none of these, all they have is a handy list of folksy excuses none of which are in any way relevant to their immediate situation which is, after all, simply one of a civilised 21st human being feeling somehow compelled to black up their face for reasons, ultimately, best known to themselves. Given that we live in an age of hieghtened sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity in a country where these things matter a good deal, such behaviour is both suspect and puzzling. Historical and Traditional reasons prove utterly bogus; the reasons that emerge are invariable a reaction to Political Correctness Gone Mad which is somehow perceived as a threat to some wholly fictitious folk heritage (re-modelled circa 1975) which must be protected at all costs least we somehow lose our all-important national pride. Still, never mind, eh, chaps? Under UKIP I dare say such practises will be compulsory. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Les in Chorlton Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:21 AM Thanks very much for a thoughtful and reasoned reply Henry. 1).The evidence for the "Roots" of Black faces lying with Minstrelsy, is by no means conclusive, - sorry it is - I have posted the evidence before but people generally just ignore it. Instruments? Saxophones I have seen in Morris Bands - Blackface is claimed to have it's roots 16 C 17C 18C - free reads are much later. I have no problem with any of that but if people cherry pick which bits of history they are following the need to understand history and evidence. As for who is offended to be clear almost nobody knows - isn't that the truth? But some Black People are - not many but yes some are. "and I believe that the actual numbers offended are smaller than you might imagine" You can believe and imagine what you like - that's not evidence. What in the microscopic world of Border Morris stopping people from just using other colours? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 15 Oct 14 - 08:15 AM Surely it just boils down to a simple basic premise. If YOU stubbornly insist on blacking up in public, in an era and social climate where a significant proportion of our populace will automatically suspect you are likely to be making a provocative racist statement, then YOU must take full responsibility, and accept the consequences. Can't be simpler than that can it ??? So carry on 'blacking up' if it's that important to you..... Note: "Carry on Blacking Up" 1975 Sid and Ken and all rest of the loveable saucy crew play a village morris dance team who come a cropper when the annual 'blacking up' dance fete and beauty contest clashes with a bullying farm land owner spitefully hiring one of his fields to a Reggae pop festival. Oh well... we can dream... |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Henry Piper of Ottery. Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:53 AM Les. To avoid more "Going around and around" let me summarise my reasons for disagreeing with a lot, (though not all off your Numbered comments) 1).The evidence for the "Roots" of Black faces lying with Minstrelsy, is by no means conclusive, on the contrary there is considerable evidence that blackened faces have been used as a disguise in many other seasonal rituals, prior to the popularity of minstrelsy, the assertion that it is always racist is also shaky, it may appear so to modern sensibilities, but as an above poster says, it may also be seen as a way of white performers cashing in on the success and popularity of black artists, without necessarily any deliberate intention to demean or insult them, it would be interesting to see how black performers were viewed by the public and white colleagues. From what I've read of music hall history, there were quite a few black performers and in the main they seem to have been very popular. 2)....unfortunately true in the main, although the costumes historically worn did seem to feature an element of fancy dress and did include tatters worn on the jackets or shirts, in Motley Morris ALL our original dances were based on known dances or constructed from collected fragments, and our instruments were, concertinas, melodeons, and fiddles, all instruments found in mainstream Morris. the tunes we used were the ones associated with the collected information, or popular tunes from the Victorian period. 3/4 you said it, almost no one is offended, and in the main those offended seem to be white people taking offence on behalf of black people, certainly many black people will have experienced racism in some form, but I would think that the majority would be more concerned about Real discrimination in Housing, employment and similar real-life issues than worrying about a few people wearing make up and cavorting around outside a pub a few times a year. 5, don't quite understand your point here Les, I don't believe that its a case of not caring if people are offended, and I believe that the actual numbers offended are smaller than you might imagine. Whether we like it or not,and for whatever historical reasons, Border Morris WAS danced in the main with black faces, and if we are going to present an accurate picture of the tradition/style call it what you will we should present it "warts and all" Explaining if necessary to audiences the historical setting in which it existed. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Manitas_at_home Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:53 AM "border dancers and molly dancers in East Anglia have been doing so for the last two centuries" No, they haven't. The dancing died out and has been "revived" or more likely made up and labeled as the same thing. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:46 AM Pheasants have to die to decorate those hats ... ;-) |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Bounty Hound Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:37 AM You didn't answer my question Jack! 'Tell me precisely how a morris man, dressing up in a tatter jacket, putting heavy boots and bell pads on, wearing a hat decorated with flowers and feathers, and painiting their face is in ANY WAY demeaning to someone of a different ethnic origin or skin colour? As I said, the face paint is just part of the kit! Perhaps putting feathers in their hat is also indicative of them having issues with pheasants! |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:37 AM On a thread about morris sides blacking up, is it not a little disingenuous to defend the practice by suggesting that we shouldn't disagree with it whilst there are more serious and overt manifestations of racism out there? "Keep your powder dry, lads" is usually code for "we don't want to have to think about this one". Of course horrorshows like the rise of UKIP and the increase in media fuelled muslim-bashing are far more pressing, but that's for a seperate thread. This is a discussion of a particular "folkloric" practice on a folk forum. You ok with that? I also cannot emphasise enough that my objection to modern blackface I don't particularly want my cultural heritage represented by dubious customs that should have long been consigned to the dustbin of history - and in fact were, until the re-enactors got their hands on them. White people blacking up to entertain in the 21st century cannot be divorced from the racist legacy of minstrelry even if the people who do it protest vociforously that that is not what they mean. For me, it is simply a case of not in my name. There are plenty of traditional pursuits that have changed beyond recognition or been abandoned to the sea of barbarism where they belong - anyone fancy making the case for bringing back badger baiting, bear baiting, dog fighting, hare coursing, ducking witches and so on because they are (arguably more so than blackfaced morris) part of our tradition? As none of us are impoverished agricultural labourers hiding our identities from the squire when we go begging (if you accept that this is the only historic reason for blacking up and ignore the other factors), there is no reason not to adapt the tradition for the 21st century as morris dancers have clearly done for many other aspects of their hobby. But I suspect a bunch of blacked-up whiteys who are happy to pose with Cameron wouldn't give a toss about this anyway... |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Derrick Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:33 AM 1. The evidence for the roots of 'Blackface' are in Minstrelsey wich was racist. Les, Have you forgotten the last post on this topic? You conceded then, after reading the wikapedia article on border morris,that blacking up was much older than the minstrel shows. You agreed that the article was inconclusive regarding the amount of influence the minstrel shows had on the matter. The evidence you quote as far as I can see is your opinion rather than fact. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:32 AM If Jeremy Clarkson decided to become a morris dancer ..........???????? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Bounty Hound Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:32 AM 1. The evidence for the roots of 'Blackface' are in Minstrelsey wich was racist. The counter evidence, possibly more compelling, when you consider the whole nature of morris is that it was a means of disguise, as recorded in the 18th century, and not just border morris, but molly dancers in East Anglia. 2. Most Border sides make up the dances, the kit, the tunes and play instruments never heard in Morris - great drama has been created - please stop blacking up. There are only a few recorded dances from the borders, and morris sides creating their own is part of the living tradition, and as pointed out before, painting faces is merely part of the kit. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Jack Blandiver Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:21 AM A Proud Tradition? Nope! Looks like Will Straw's fallen prey to the same bollox notions of history & tradition as everyone else who sees no harm in this noxious practise yet feels the need to apologise for it. Regardless of HISTORY, and regardless of TRADITION (whatever THAT might be!) blacked-up morris is backwards reactive hobbyism with no more relevance to the vibrant culture of the UK than model railways have to our transport system. It's quirky, contrived and eccentric - a folksy pastime contrived in the 1960s from a long dead (and rightly so) bucolic custom carried out by less enlightened individuals in less enlightened times. * Incidentally, the Royal Marines, SAS etc use black face make-up for disguise in night ops. Why aren't the 'right on' PCers calling this practice racist? I suspect its because Morris Dancers are seen as a softer target that the Armed Forces! Enjoy. That has to be the worst, Paul. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Les in Chorlton Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:04 AM Sleen and Jack have said it all in more than a little detail. As most people don't read earlier posts once the get past about 20 we are faced (!) with going around and around this subject again and again. 1. The evidence for the roots of 'Blackface' are in Minstrelsey wich was racist. 2. Most Border sides make up the dances, the kit, the tunes and play instruments never heard in Morris - great drama has been created - please stop blacking up. 3. Who is offended - almost no one but then who knows or cares about Morris anyway. 4. Most black people probably know as much about Morris as the rest of the population but make no mistake many, many black people know much, much more about the history of racism then the rest of the population. Some are uncomfortable and some are offended. 5. So we have dance sides going out with the intention of entertaining the general public and furthering some strange understanding of an English Tradition and they don't care if they offend some people. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Reynard Date: 15 Oct 14 - 07:03 AM I'd just like to make an appeal to Border morris dancers. You are dancing a revived version of a tradition, piece together from various bits of evidence, and being creative with the music and dances. Is it really *that* important for you to black-up? Is there no other more creative way you can honour the tradition of disguise? Do you really not "give a shit" that many people will be repelled from the tradition you are trying to promote? Is it worth having to repeat the rather shaky justifications about disguise etc. to counter the assumption that you are being racist? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Rahere Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:57 AM Jack, Spleen, when someone as racially aware as Will Straw defends them, and all you have is the nonsense argument of a wholly fictious parallel with something which has been rectified, then you've lost, I'm afraid. Your case was answered long since, and with no other data to refresh it, then you're simply being contentious. Taken more widely, the use of "racism" as a broad-brush get-out-of-jail-free card is as much racist as the behaviour it is meant to stop (as seen in the Manchester child abuse cases, I repeat). Racism remains a serious and utterly disgusting problem, and discrediting a major tool against it in this way is to nobody's benefit. You argue it was an invention of the 1960s/70s, the record shows it is far older. Keep the charge for the things which really are racist, please. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Les in Chorlton Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:53 AM Sleen and Jack have said it all in more than a little detail. As most people don't read earlier posts once the get past about 20 we are faced (!) with going around and around this subject again and again. 1. The evidence for the roots of 'Blackface' are in Minstrelsey wich was racist. 2. Most Border sides make up the dances, the kit, the tunes and play instruments never heard in Morris - great drama has been created - please stop blacking up. 3. Who is offended - almost no one but then who knows or cares about Morris anyway. 4. Most black people probably know as much about Morris as the rest of the population but make no mistake many, many black people know much, much more about the history of racism then the rest of the population. Some are uncomfortable and some are offended. 5. So we have dance sides going out with the intention of entertaining the general public and furthering some strange understanding of an English Tradition and they don't care if they offend some people. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Howard Jones Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:53 AM "The very act of deliberately blacking up is racist" Nonsense. It is being done for entirely different purposes. That it may be seen as racist by some is another matter. The increase in blacked-up morris coincides with the revival of the traditions which used it. Prior to the 1970s 'morris' almost invariably meant Cotswold, where there was no tradition of blacking up. The 1970s saw the revival of Border and Molly. Now you may criticise this as 'fake', and much of it has been made up, but as far as possible the original revivalists took as much as was known from traditional sources, including the costumes and the practice of blacking up. As Henry Piper points out, this was uncontroversial until fairly recently (long after minstrel blackface or actors blacking up to play Othello became unacceptable). Perhaps this reflects the proliferation of Border sides. It seems to provoke far more of a reaction from white people taking offence on black people's behalf than it does from black people themselves. If morris were racist, then using a different colour face paint would not disguise it. Would anyone have been fooled by the Blue and White Minstrels? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,as at 14 Oct 14 - 03:33 PM Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:45 AM What 'MGM Lion' pointed out about the incomplete blacking i what an image search shows. I think it is derogatory, in a "does he take sugar" sort of way, to attempt to speak for the people who it is thought might be offended. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Bounty Hound Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:35 AM So Jack, it's ok for a chimney sweep to DELIBERATELY black up, as it's what everyone expects! but despite the fact that border dancers and molly dancers in East Anglia have been doing so for the last two centuries, that's not! The comparison with Aboriginal dancers is obvious, they paint their faces in a colour different to their natural colour, and as they live in the same world as us, and do it deliberately, so by your definition, it must be a racist act. Tell me precisely how a morris man, dressing up in a tatter jacket, putting heavy boots and bell pads on, wearing a hat decorated with flowers and feathers, and painiting their face is in ANY WAY demeaning to someone of a different ethnic origin or skin colour? As I said, the face paint is just part of the kit! Perhaps putting feathers in their hat is also indicative of them having issues with pheasants! As Guest just said, 'Morris men blacking up it is not racist apart from those that want to make it' and for some unknown reason, you obviously do! |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Henry Piper of Ottery. Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:29 AM I am a founder member of a black face Border morris Team, The Dartford Motley, later Motley Morris, although I have long retired from dancing. We were one of the earliest teams to take up the style, certainly in the South East, largely under the influence of John Kirkpatricks Shropshire Bedlams. During our early years we regularly danced around South London, and North Kent areas with quite a sizeable,Black population, to the best of my recollection we never experienced any hostility from these people, amusement sometimes, and Much Ribald jocularity. The hostility towards black faces seems to have come about in fairly recent times and as far as I can see seems to emanate, in the main not from black people themselves, but by a section of the white population who chose to speak on others behalf, and seem to see affront in quite unintentional areas, and are determined to pin the racist label on everything they see around them, wether or not there is any intent to insult or hurt. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST, Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:20 AM "The thing I fail to understand is why any self respecting morris side would want to be photographed posing with Cameron!" "All I can say is the dancers in question can't be very good trade unionists." "I still don't understand why any self respecting morris side would want to pose with Cameron, even if they are in disguise!" Whatever the origins of the Morris (disputed, as we know), the reality, whether you like it or not, is that Morris dancing is now a largely middle-class pursuit. Many dancers are not left-wing activists or even left-wing sympathisers. There is no reason for the people quoted above to expect them to agree unquestioningly with the politics of the twentieth-century working class, or of agricultural labourers in previous centuries. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Re-enactor, Date: 15 Oct 14 - 06:04 AM I find it astonishing that so many Mudcatters cannot accept that its perfectly possible to COPY something without MOCKING it. I take part in re-enactments of Napoleonic era battles, and as such I wear the appropriate uniforms and affect as far as I can the speech and mannerisms of the period, Am I mocking soldiers of the Era ?, I also formerly played in a country and western style band, and when on stage I wore Stetson, jeans, checked or fancy shirts and cowboy boots, and tried to use an American Accent when singing, am I mocking American Cowboys ?? certainly in neither case was I trying to mock or insult anyone. I don't find it beyond possibility that 19th century white performers seeing the popularity of the black colleagues on the vaudeville circuit decided to try and emulate their success, and adopted black make up as part of the act, I don't think we can automatically assume Evil intent in this. !! By the same token Morris dancers of that period in some areas may have built on an already existing tradition of disguise in order to appeal to a wider audience by incorporating elements of the then popular minstrel acts in their performance. The Photo of the American team in there "Kiss" style outfits shows this still happening today.( Or are they Mocking Kiss !!!) |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST Date: 15 Oct 14 - 05:55 AM We had a black American staying with us at a folk festival,she was not offended by black face Morris. We explained there where many theories and pick the one that suited, she thought it highly amusing that if she danced she could paint her face white and no one would know it was her. I suspect all the people contribute here are white and need to get a life there are more important things out there other than Morris men blacking up it is not racist apart from those that want to make it. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Jack Blandiver Date: 15 Oct 14 - 05:38 AM A black-faced sweep -- so from his work, no connection whatever to race -- has long been regarded as a bringer of good luck - I placed especial emphasis on deliberately blacking-up, Michael. The last coalman we had was when we lived a few years back in a village in rural country Durham; I'd known this guy for four years and didn't recognise him one night I saw him washed and clean in the pub. I've said here before that whilst there are many & various historical, traditional, folkloric & occupational precedents for blacking up, my argument is that to do so in a Modern Context for Purposes of Revival and Recreation is just plain wrong. Interesting that our chimney sweep at that time supplemented his dwindling income by doing weddings as well. Blacked-up, of course, as one expects a chimney-sweep to be black because of his trade, not because it is a matter of folklore or custom, which is less clear. So - even there might well be non-racist reasons for the village morris-dancers of old blacking-up of old (as I allow there might be) to do so in today's society, at some remove culturally & historically from the context in which practises traditionally took place, is a racist act regardless. * So what about the question posed earlier then Jack, are Aboriginal dancers with white faces racist, or is that just their tradition? Your precious custom only dates from the 60s and 70s - and even then takes a while to catch-on in morris fashion. I remember a Morris Ring meeting in Durham around 1985 or so and only one side (the admittedly astonishing Silurians) were blacked-up. Now everywhere you look you see black-faced dancers in a variety of modern styles & tastes. How can you compare such slap-dash make-it-up-as-you-go-along revivalism of a few hearty middle-class hobbyists to the aeons old culture of a severely oppressed & harshly victimised depressed ethnic minority whose only pride comes from the vestiges of their living culture? The men smear their faces and bodies with white clay and move onto the sand in a large group, carrying ceremonial spears. They stand before a specially constructed cloth-walled tent in which the body lies. Older men provide the music—a rhythmic crack of clapsticks, a trilling chant, the thrumming drone of the didgeridoo. Then the dancers, like the ancestral beings of the Dreamtime, seem to shift shape before my eyes, contorting their bodies, elongating their necks, stomping their feet and thrusting spears, all moving together, a many-legged creature, sand flying, sweat streaming. Each dance, mimicking an animal or a natural event, is short and intense. There's the white seagull dance, the octopus dance, the north wind dance, the cockatoo dance. Some are performed only by women. The dances last all day, and another, and another—the funeral carries on for ten days—as people stream in from communities across the bush to pay respect, to dance some more, to set the soul on its journey with the grandest possible send-off. (from HERE Where, I wonder, is the comparison? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe Date: 15 Oct 14 - 05:29 AM I think there is some serious missing of the point going on here. First of all, let's get over this irrelevant crap about "the PC brigade" - that's a right wing media invention to smear anyone with progressive politics deemed to have stepped out of line. It's a dubious tradition with its own history of fakelore and invented scandals. Let's also get over this 'people will always find something to be offended by' trope, too. I'm not offended by blackface morris. I just think it's a little sad and pathetic. It reminds me of the tired jingoism of UKIP. I also think Paul Davenport's cheap shot about morris been an easy target compared with the military is indicative of the kind of flawed thinking on display. Don't pretend you can't see the difference between the two examples? Likewise, the people who compare aboriginal Australian rituals to blacked up morris dance. Once Australia's apartheid system and historical racist campaign against indigenous Australians has ended and there is true equality between the races over there, come back and discuss the matter, eh? Racism always has a power dynamic. It really doesn't matter whether the origins of blackface morris are in disguise when begging, Moorish/Spanish dancing, minstrelry or lampooning tribal dances. What does matter is that we live here and now, when the main association of blackface entertainment is with minstelry, which is beyond dispute a racist tradition. Anyone, regardless of their own views on race, who blacks up will be doing so in the full knowledge of this key cultural context unless they've spent their entire life deep in a hole in the ground. It's entirely up to the morris sides concerned whether they do it, but if they do so, accusations that they are echoing a racist tradition will come their way, whether they like it or not. particularly as it's largely a reflection of a fakelore tradition reinvented as part of the late twentieth century folk revival. As for Black Pig, I don't think their modern take on morris would be in any way compromised by painting their faces other colours. They simply choose not to. This whole thing reminds me of people who insist 'gay' simply means 'happy'. We live in an age now where Bellowhead and the Unthanks are probably the best selling purveyors of traditional folk. Not blacking up is no more of a move away from "the" tradition than them not sounding anything like Walter Pardon or May Bradley is. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: MGM·Lion Date: 15 Oct 14 - 05:01 AM Jack is one of several, it seems to me, who are determined to identify racism as endemic & epidemic in all sorts of innocent activities and attitudes. Counter-productive! Remember the moral of one of Thurber's Fables For Our Time -- "You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward". ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: MGM·Lion Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:54 AM ... particularly [look again at that pic of Cameron & the dancers] as some do not black up completely, but over only part of the face. If they were aiming for a racist 'ho-ho Sambo'n'Rastus' image, they would black up completely, with those contrasting exaggerated white lips & all, surely? Which they don't. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Bounty Hound Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:53 AM So what about the question posed earlier then Jack, are Aboriginal dancers with white faces racist, or is that just their tradition? The blacked up morris dancer is in no way attempting to be insulting to black people, as I said before look at the bigger picture, and then tell me that a morris dancer is attempting to imitate someone of a different ethnic origin. Painting faces is simply part of the kit! |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: MGM·Lion Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:50 AM Not necessarily, Jack There are other longstanding traditions being overlooked, which, it could be urged, are equally relevant and which you are ignoring. The various superstitions concerning chimney sweeps, for example, are being forgotten, it seems to me. A black-faced sweep -- so from his work, no connection whatever to race -- has long been regarded as a bringer of good luck -- ("Good luck omen:- In Great Britain it is considered lucky for a bride to see a chimney sweep on her wedding day" -- Wikipedia). Is there not, arguably, more connection to this tradition, in the black-face morrismen & guisers, than to US-derived blackface minstrelsy? ≈M≈ |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Jack Blandiver Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:32 AM Explain what exactly? The very act of deliberately blacking up is racist. Anything else is just an excuse. Remember - you guys only started doing this is the heady days of the 60s and 70s. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Howard Jones Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:25 AM When you consider the huge part minstrelsy played popular culture throughout a large part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it is difficult to conclude it cannot have had some influence on morris, and it certainly contributed some tunes. My own view is that it probably reinforced an existing tradition of blacking up, but blacking up does not itself come from minstrelsy. The point is that there are other reasons for blacking up besides imitating, let alone derogating, black people. There is nothing else in morris which appears to have any other connection with black culture or gives any suggestion of imitating or derogating it. Many black people have no difficulty recognising that blacked-up morris is not about them. If some take offence, the answer is to explain it, not change it. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Derrick Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:24 AM The answer, then, is not to black up black on black, but as camo, and collect for one of the veterans charities. That makes this untouchable! Veteran supporters might regard it as taking the mickey and anti war campaigners could interpret it as glorying war. What ever you do someone will read it as offensive if it suits them. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Jack Blandiver Date: 15 Oct 14 - 04:14 AM although judging by his most recent post, he's one of those who is not bright enough to see that bigger picture! Personal insults aside, Bounty Hound - the Bigger Picture of the UK is a vast and diverse interconnecting society of some 64 Million souls of a multiplicity of ethnicities and cultures each engaged in the pursuit of personal & forward thinking cultural happiness as is their right and privilege as human individuals. Within this, somewhere, there is a tiny cult of self-serving attention seeking Folk Dancing Hobbyists who feel that by blacking up their faces they are doing something Historic and Traditional when, in reality, the History of their Tradition goes back to a bunch of revivalists fired up by the Folk Zeitgeist of the 60s & 70s using God alone knows what sort of fakelore to justify the unthinkable. |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Rahere Date: 14 Oct 14 - 09:03 PM Part of not finding it earlier is because you're looking in the wrong place: Grimaldi blacked up, as did the guy playing Othello, the Moor of Venice. Will Kemp, from the same company, was renowned as a morrisman, and may have had a hand in the build of the play (1601-3), although he was dead by the time it was staged in late 1603. We know that the early morris came from these same Court circles at the same time, making the proximity of theme more than tempting. It's only once morris leaves the stage in the Restoration that you'll find blackface as a tradition. By that time the slave trade was well established, and so it's also part of a social discrimination: what might originally have been a mostly ignorant attempt at cultural integration had by then become somewhat derogatory. And so it remained. The question of blackface comes from an entirely different and utterly racist origin, the minstrel tradition of the US. Extending it into the folk domain is probably excessive, as there is no common ground: the folk world is not derogating or being in any way abusive of people of African descent. IF there were tunes which did so, then there would be a case. However, the race card is being overplayed of late to the extent where it is actually being used in reverse racism, as a way of making it impossible to criticise people of that ethnicity (Manchester child abuse police problems being a case in point). In practice, it is simply racism in reverse, colour on white, and that we should no more tolerate than white on anyone else. We're people, folks, and skin colour should make fuck all difference either way. The answer, then, is not to black up black on black, but as camo, and collect for one of the veterans charities. That makes this untouchable! |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker Date: 14 Oct 14 - 07:00 PM Yes, being objective, the black face makeup in the Cameron photo does look very 'good'; in the sense of a disconcerting other worldly theatrical masked persona. I like the look of it. But, in a modern Britain of over-reactive social media and oportunistic scandal & confrontation driven news journalism agendas; is it really worth it for a bunch of old time dance hobbyists, braving all the inevitable disdain and aggro to be expected from 'blacking up' in public ??? Even if it is not the concious intention, 'blacking up' is very likely to be widely received and perceived as an act of overt rectionary provocation. Yeah, let them carry on fighting for their right to freedom of cultural expresion. Yeah, why not... Why should morris be forced to make concessions to us hairbrained lefty 'PC brigade'. Yeah let them be as stubborn as they like. They are all grown ups, they can accept total responsibility for how they portray themeslves in full public view to a baffled multicultural populace. It's not as though traditional British folk customs are being at all appropriated as an inspirational rallying cause for the E*L & B*P....?????? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Phil Edwards Date: 14 Oct 14 - 06:53 PM I agree that anyone who can black up their face is also capable of painting it blue or green. I'm asking why we - or people in general - worry about blackface, why we don't give it the benefit of the doubt. The reason I mentioned Black Pig is that I don't think anyone would look at that photo and think "oo-er, might be a bit racist" - the thought just wouldn't arise. The face paint looks weird, but so does everything else about them. By contrast, if you combine black face-paint with a more conventional border Morris get-up (and, perhaps, a higher average age), those suspicions seem appropriate. Conventional Morris sides start out under suspicion & need to prove they're not racist. But why is this, and should we accept it? |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: Bounty Hound Date: 14 Oct 14 - 05:54 PM Just picked up some information from a discussion of this topic elsewhere, and you are correct Steve, that there is a school of thought that blacking up was inspired by the popularity of the minstrel shows. I'm far more inclined to the disguise theory, particularly when you consider that the minstrels were a 'formal' staged show, and the morris or molly dancers would have used soot from the chimney. However you look at it, I still don't understand why any self respecting morris side would want to pose with Cameron, even if they are in disguise! John |
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Subject: RE: Black-faced Morris dancers From: GUEST,Selby Date: 14 Oct 14 - 05:26 PM Sorry Steve you are of course right on the time of year In our area Selby. Although there is Paul Davenports picture that trashes the argument possibly perhaps maybe Keith |
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