Overview

Singing was just one element of blues performance in the early twentieth century. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and other classic blues singers also tapped, joked, and flaunted extravagant costumes on tent show and black vaudeville stages. The press even described these women as ""actresses"" long before they achieved worldwide fame for their musical recordings. In Staging the Blues, Paige A. McGinley shows that even though folklorists, record producers, and festival promoters set the theatricality of early blues aside in favor of notions of authenticity, it remained creatively vibrant throughout the twentieth century. Highlighting performances by Rainey, Smith, Lead Belly, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee in small Mississippi towns, Harlem theaters, and the industrial British North, this pioneering study foregrounds virtuoso blues artists who used the conventions of the theater, including dance, comedy, and costume, to stage black mobility, to challenge narratives of racial authenticity, and to fight for racial and economic justice.

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9780822357452

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Reviews

This beautifully written and engaging account of how blues has been staged will change for good how theater scholars think of musical performance, and how music scholars think of theater. Paige A. McGinley's observation that 'authenticity is produced theatrically, on stage, in the context of the performance event' deconstructs the binary between authenticity and inauthenticity, allowing her to focus on black agency and subjectivity as it is produced in and through performance. -- Gayle Wald, author of Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Staging the Blues is a much-needed, even game-changing intervention into dominant models for the study of blues music and culture. Based on amazing original research, Paige A. McGinley reassesses what we think we know about the blues, offers bold and insightful analyses of the racial and gendered politics of blues performance and reception, and, crucially, restores critical recognition of the theatricality of the blues and its historical place in traditions of popular performance. -- Jayna Brown, author of Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern A fascinating study that ought to be widely read and its implications thoughtfully considered. For scholars, critics, historians, and aficionados of the blues. -- Genevieve Williams Library Journal [McGinley] does a worthy job of explaining how the dominant framing of the blues essentially assigned the very notion of theatrical performance - and, by extension, a performer's right to develop a stage presence of his/her own choosing - to a gendered, second-class status. The irony turns out to be that said framing was itself a theatrical construct in the first place. -- Mark Reynolds PopMatters In this concise musical journey of the mise-en-scene of blues music performances, McGinley takes readers to the South, starting with the tent shows of an earlier era and concluding with the current staging of the blues for genre travelers and tourists. ... Readers are left with the knowledge of what scenic staging has meant for blues throughout the decades. ... Recommended. All readers. -- T. Emery Choice Staging the Blues will likely become the latest in a line of mould-breaking scholarly works on the blues to have emerged in recent years. McGinley's emphasis on theatricality brings life to well-worn subjects, and aptly illustrates the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach that is not yet the norm in blues scholarship. This book is quite simply a must for all scholars and students of African American performance culture. -- Lawrence Davies Studies in Theatre and Performance Tracing the iterative qualities of theatrical blues trappings and their transformation by blues performers, Staging the Blues makes an important contribution to our understanding of the production and performance of race. Its exhaustive archival depth recasts familiar performances and introduces new material that adds to the scholarly repertoire of black performance studies. Most significantly, it establishes a vital conversation between popular theatre and music that provides a model of interdisciplinary performance studies. -- Shane Vogel Theatre Research International [T]his study will prove to be one of the most captivating additions to the scholarship on the blues to date. -- Tammy L. Kernodle American Studies In short, this book is a must-read. McGinley's methodology and historical purview tear down those worn-out perceptions of authenticity to reinsert the thespian dynamism of American vernacular music. -- Stephanie Vander Wel The Journal of Southern History

Staging the Blues is a much-needed, even game-changing intervention into dominant models for the study of blues music and culture. Based on amazing original research, Paige A. McGinley reassesses what we think we know about the blues, offers bold and insightful analyses of the racial and gendered politics of blues performance and reception, and, crucially, restores critical recognition of the theatricality of the blues and its historical place in traditions of popular performance. --Jayna Brown, author of Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (03/12/2014)

""A fascinating study that ought to be widely read and its implications thoughtfully considered. For scholars, critics, historians, and aficionados of the blues."" - Genevieve Williams (Library Journal) “[McGinley] does a worthy job of explaining how the dominant framing of the blues essentially assigned the very notion of theatrical performance – and, by extension, a performer’s right to develop a stage presence of his/her own choosing – to a gendered, second-class status. The irony turns out to be that said framing was itself a theatrical construct in the first place.” - Mark Reynolds (PopMatters) “In this concise musical journey of the mise-en-scÈne of blues music performances, McGinley takes readers to the South, starting with the tent shows of an earlier era and concluding with the current staging of the blues for genre travelers and tourists. … Readers are left with the knowledge of what scenic staging has meant for blues throughout the decades. … Recommended. All readers.” - T. Emery (Choice) “Staging the Blues will likely become the latest in a line of mould-breaking scholarly works on the blues to have emerged in recent years. McGinley’s emphasis on theatricality brings life to well-worn subjects, and aptly illustrates the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach that is not yet the norm in blues scholarship. This book is quite simply a must for all scholars and students of African American performance culture.” - Lawrence Davies (Studies in Theatre and Performance) “Tracing the iterative qualities of theatrical blues trappings and their transformation by blues performers, Staging the Blues makes an important contribution to our understanding of the production and performance of race. Its exhaustive archival depth recasts familiar performances and introduces new material that adds to the scholarly repertoire of black performance studies. Most significantly, it establishes a vital conversation between popular theatre and music that provides a model of interdisciplinary performance studies.”  - Shane Vogel (Theatre Research International) ""[T]his study will prove to be one of the most captivating additions to the scholarship on the blues to date."" - Tammy L. Kernodle (American Studies) ""In short, this book is a must-read. McGinley’s methodology and historical purview tear down those worn-out perceptions of authenticity to reinsert the thespian dynamism of American vernacular music."" - Stephanie Vander Wel (Journal of Southern History) ""Staging the Blues complicates and reaches beyond the blues landscape, making it a significant and timely text for scholars and music aficionados alike."" - Emily Rutter (Women & Performance) ""Staging the Blues is an exemplary contribution to a new body of performance studies scholarship that embeds music critically in its sociopolitical, cultural, and artistic milieu."" - Joseph Roach (TDR: The Drama Review) ""In unpackaging what we thought we knew about blues performances, McGinley powerfully demonstrates their centrality in shaping a musical history for the United States and beyond."" - Patricia R. Schroeder (African American Review)

[McGinley] does a worthy job of explaining how the dominant framing of the blues essentially assigned the very notion of theatrical performance and, by extension, a performer s right to develop a stage presence of his/her own choosing to a gendered, second-class status. The irony turns out to be that said framing was itself a theatrical construct in the first place. --Mark Reynolds PopMatters

A fascinating study that ought to be widely read and its implications thoughtfully considered. For scholars, critics, historians, and aficionados of the blues. --Genevieve Williams Library Journal

Author Information

Paige A. McGinley is Assistant Professor of Performing Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

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