Thursday, September 13, 2012

Blackface and Whiteface. Why, Bob Dylan?

I just gotta write this down so I don't forget. Maybe I'll come back to these thoughts at some point.

Today in my Romanticism and Music class, we were discussing Bob Dylan, and his 1970s "Love and Theft" project. Prof. Brady brought up Blackface minstrelsy and the reasons behind it. Besides being racially motivated and mockingly prejudiced, she also talked about the way that these minstrels, a lot of the time, tended to be some of the lowest of the low on the totem pole. And what is the way to make yourself better when you are at the low end of the food chain? Make fun of anyone who might be lower: in this case, the African Americans, both freed and slaves.

This discussion led into a video clip of Bob Dylan performing circa 1975 on his Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Revue? That sounds more like a carnival or variety show, not a tour. In this clip, Bob Dylan was singing "Tangled Up in Blue," complete with different lyrics, and he had put on Whiteface. Yes...Whiteface. What kind of statement could "The Dylan" have been making by putting on Whiteface in a show that came 10 or so years after he was booed off stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival for going electric? Also, keeping in mind that after his 3 song electric set in '65, he returned alone and played acoustic in order to appease the crowd.

Hmm...I have a whole mess of thoughts on this, none of which are organized enough for a blog post. I'll have to think on this and come back in a few days to make some connections.

So many of the concepts between these two classes are overlapping. I was pulling them together on Tuesday when we discussed spirit photography, the mysterious and a fascination with death. Oy.

Anyway, my assigned blog post is to come. Stay tuned. ^_^

In the meantime, have some Dylan. 


  1. FYI, 'Love and Theft' was released in 2001. As far as the influence of minstrelsy on the album, I suggest you first consider the title. Now, as far as Black Face is concerned, I think Dylan considers the issue complex and whilst racially sensitive or worse worthy of historical examination. Note: there is a Black Face character in his film 'Masked & Anonymous', which you should check out. The White Face? Dylan has played with the idea of 'masks' his entire career and the film made at the time of that tour, 'Renaldo & Clara' plays with the whole idea of identity and what is meaant/means to be 'Bob Dylan'. Hope this helps.

  2. He began the shows wearing a Richard Nixon mask and the white make up was for two reasons, one was literally so the people in the back could pick him out on stage and the other was so Joan Baez could also have white make up and wear the same outfit as a piece of light tomfoolery that commented on the identity of the character of Bob Dylan.

  3. His return to the stage with an acoustic guitar on 1965 might have been to appease the audience, but then again, the Band had only rehearsed 3 numbers. And the songs he have them, "It's all over now, baby blue" and "Mr Tambourine Man" were hardly what the diehard follies were calling for.

  4. Dylan was mainly inspired by a French movie; “Les Enfants Du Paradis” pointed out by his painting and philosophy teacher; Norman Raeben

  5. Pierrot specifically, commedia dell'arte generally.

    Not everything should be looked at through the lens of the contemporary topic of the moment.

  6. A few notes on the fine comments above: Dylan's "Love and Theft" was titled after a 1993 book by Eric Lott, "Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class." That may be why Dylan puts quotation marks around "Love and Theft." Not only was the album released in 2001, but on 9/11/01, the day the towers fell. The "Masked and Anonymous" movie was co-written by Dylan (under a pseudonym); the black-face character was played by Ed Harris.

  7. "Love and Theft" is a stolen album (not an insult -- great artists steal). The melodies are stolen and so are the lyrics. They are formed into a grand collage, and a lot of it is about bricolage, or the idea that identity can be created out of a menagerie of signifiers. Signifiers are our vocabulary out of which to create identity, and we choose different signifiers to create new meaning. Also, some of what is in there is actually stolen from minstrel shows. The part that confuses Othello and Desdemona for Romeo and Juliet, for instance, isn't a mistake on Dylan's part, but is from a blackface performance that satirized Shakespeare. One album Dylan has mentioned before is Good For What Ails You, a two disc collection of songs performed at medicine shows, including several minstrel numbers. It not only includes songs performed in blackface, but also includes black performers performing in white face. I don't think that had anything to do with Rolling Thunder's white face though, as zig zag and Phil Abernathy's comments above are both spot on. ... As for it being a revue, it was. Dylan wasn't the only performer. Allen Ginsberg read poetry. Multiple acts came on stage. There was an incantation by a Native American dubbed Rolling Thunder (I don't know if this was his real name -- Rolling Thunder was also the name of our military operation in Vietnam, which I think was the inspiration, so I don't know if they found Rolling Thunder and invited him along or if they found someone to perform as Rolling Thunder). Anyway, its his best tour and I wish I had been alive to see it.

  8. It was a sacred and holy thing about the Moon.