Stephen Foster was one of the most influential composers within blackface minstrelsy. Foster found his place in the minstrelsy playing field as its prime. His first big hit was the still widely known Oh! Susanna. The song gained its fame in 1848 through Christy’s Minstrels (1). Oh! Susanna represented Foster’s initial take on slavery, consisting of lyrics that made fun of slaves and made them seem “naïve and unsophisticated (2)”:
It rain’d all night de day I left,
De wedder it was dry,
The sun so hot I froze to def,
Susann, don’t you cry.
I jump’d aboard the telegraph,
and trabbled down de ribber,
De lectricik fluid magnified,
and killed five hundred Nigga.
However, Foster’s compositions followed the “evolving perception of slave life,” as they paralleled the 1850s' shift on the social and political views of slavery. In particular, it was the rampant growth of the abolition movement and the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that had the greatest influence (3). Foster called the product of his stylistic changes “plantation melodies.” Rather than following the hostile tone of songs like Oh! Susanna, plantation melodies attempted to “humanize the image of the oppressed slave” and show that they experienced the “same joys and sorrows” as the men on the minstrel stage (4). The staple example of a plantation melody is Foster’s 1853 My Old Kentucky Home:
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay;
The corn-top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright;
By 'n' by Hard Times comes a-knocking at the door,
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight
The obvious change in subject, tone, and dialect, made it clear that Foster had joined the North’s antislavery sentiment and had left the 1840s minstrel show ways (5).
1) PBS Online. “The American Experience: Stephen Foster.” PBS. 2001. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/index.html
2-5) Shaftel, Matthew. "Singing a New Song: Stephen Foster and the New American Minstrelsy." Music and Politics. 2007. http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2007-2/shaftel.html.
2-5) Shaftel, Matthew. "Singing a New Song: Stephen Foster and the New American Minstrelsy." Music and Politics. 2007. http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2007-2/shaftel.html.