Word: minstrels
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...ribs. The broody lyrics of Nick Lowe's Battlefield ("All around there is desolation/ And scenes of devastation/ Of a love being torn apart") get swallowed and spat out by the jouncy banjo, the skiffle beat and the Jordanaires-style backing vocals, till the whole thing sounds like a minstrel show staged by Grand Ole Opry; everyone has a high time playing at misery...
...DOMINION Virginia finally retires minstrel-era song as official state tune. Don't carry me back anymore...
...animals talk (the tigers sound like up-to-the-minute hep cats, saying "Ain't I fine?" instead of "Now I'm the grandest tiger in the jungle!"). Lester and Pinkney also give the story--originally written in 1899 by a Scottish woman and set in India but with minstrel-like black characters--a specifically African-American slant. Marcellino's approach is the more conservationist. He has left the original's simple text as it was, merely replacing the characters' names with Indian ones and adding sweetly spare new illustrations...
...Internet recently calling for readers to join PAHB--Peoples Against Hootie & the Blowfish. This week the New York Times dismissed Rucker as rock's "reigning crybaby," a reference to his emotive lyrics. Some of the criticism cuts deeper. A writer for the Village Voice compared the band to a minstrel show, and Saturday Night Live did a sketch where Rucker leads beer-swilling white frat boys in a countermarch to Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March (apparently, to the mostly white staff at SNL, successful blacks must be sellouts...
...novel about the horrors of slavery, using both narrative and mime. (In the racially mixed company, Simon Legree is often played, ironically, by a black dancer.) The second half explores the nature of religious faith in an age plagued by evils like AIDS. It includes gospel singing, minstrel-show dancing and an improvised, unscripted conversation on whether the disease is God's punishment for homosexuality, conducted between Jones and a clergyman recruited from the local community. The piece concludes with the entire cast, along with previously selected volunteers from the audience, standing nude and silent onstage...