(Banjo). Featuring more than 65 classic songs; this interesting book teaches how to play the minstrel banjo like players who were part of various popular troupes in 1865. The book includes: a short history of the banjo in the US in the antebellum period; including the origins of the minstrel show; info on the construction of minstrel banjos; evolution of the lower-pitched minstrel banjo tunings; and idiomatic techniques peculiar to the minstrel banjo; chapters on each of the seven major banjo methods published through the end of the Civil War; songs from each method in banjo tablature; many available first time; info on how to arrange songs for the minstrel banjo; a reference list of contemporary gut and nylon string gauges approximating historical banjo string tensions in common usage during the antebellum period (for those Civil War re-enactors who wish to achieve that old-time "minstrel banjo" sound); and an extensive cross-reference list of minstrel banjo song titles found in the major antebellum banjo methods.
#1816169 in eBooks 2010-04-28 2010-04-28File Name: B0043VD0T0
Review
9 of 45 people found the following review helpful. Get a life. please...By Daisy BrambletoesAn interesting book of its kind. While the author makes a number of thoughtful points. it nevertheless strikes me as yet another excursion into political correctness. This is "The Mikado". for heavens sake. and not some racist. anti-Japanese 19th century rant. It was meant to be taken about as seriously as a Monty Python program - which reminds me. what does Ms.Lee think of Terry Jones and Michael Palin dressed up as fat. dowdy women? Is that supposed to be an anti-feminist statement on the part of English comedians? In all fairness. Ms.Lee. as an Asian lady herself. is probably sensitive to mocking ethnic stereotypes - but "The Mikado" is only a mockery of Victorian England using silly pseudo-Japanese characters in exotic costumes. This book takes one of my all-time favorites of English literature and kicks it in the backside. all the while wondering why everyone else loves it so much. To this I say. "get a life".One thing I do agree with is that Hollywood and Broadway have. until recently. made an unfortunate habit of casting white actors in major oriental roles. It never looked or felt correct. and mercifully we are moving away from such grotesqueries as Marlon Brando and Alec Guiness made up to look Japanese. Yet who doesnt love Yul Brynner as the King of Siam? And "The Mikado" is routinely performed by people of all ethnicities. often all mixed up in the same productions. Hello. this is a f-a-i-r-y-t-a-l-e.And why does she coin an odd word like "yellowface" to describe oriental characters played by white people? Doesnt it make more sense to just fall back on the old-fashioned terms. whiteface and blackface? Yellowface comes much closer to describing European opera being performed by Japanese singers. This does happen. but I dont know of anyone getting upset by it. In our world of hyper-sensitive political correctness. we dont need to be preached at over a 19th century Britcom. loved by millions of people around the world. including (as she notes) in Japan itself. Again. I say she needs to get a life.
