Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s / Edition 1

by Krystyn R. Moon

Overview

Music and performance provide a unique window into the ways that cultural information is circulated and perceptions are constructed. Because they both require listening, are inherently ephemeral, and most often involve collaboration between disparate groups, they inform cultural perceptions differently from literary or visual art forms, which tend to be more tangible and stable.

In Yellowface, Krystyn R. Moon explores the contributions of writers, performers, producers, and consumers in order to demonstrate how popular music and performance has played an important role in constructing Chinese and Chinese American stereotypes. The book brings to life the rich musical period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time, Chinese and Chinese American musicians and performers appeared in a variety of venues, including museums, community theaters, and world’s fairs, where they displayed their cultural heritage and contested anti-Chinese attitudes. A smaller number crossed over into vaudeville and performed non-Chinese materials. Moon shows how these performers carefully navigated between racist attitudes and their own artistic desires.

While many scholars have studied both African American music and blackface minstrelsy, little attention has been given to Chinese and Chinese American music. This book provides a rare look at the way that immigrants actively participated in the creation, circulation, and, at times, subversion of Chinese stereotypes through their musical and performance work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813535074
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	11/03/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Krystyn R. Moon is an assistant professor at Georgia State University, where she teaches U.S. cultural history and Asian American history.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Imagining China: Early Nineteenth-Century Writings and Musical Productions
Toward Exclusion: American Popular Songs on Chinese Immigration, 1850-1882
Chinese and Chinese Immigrant Performers on the American Stage, 1830s-1920s
The Sounds of Chinese Otherness and American Popular Music, 1880s-1920s
From Aversion to Fascination: New Lyrics and Voices,1880s-1920s
The Rise of Chinese and Chinese American Vaudevillians, 1900s-1920s
Conclusion
Appendix A. American Popular Songs with Chinese Subjects or Themes
Appendix B. Musicals, Revues, and Plays Produced in the United States with Chinese Songs, Scenes, or Characters
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Yellowface details the theatrical and musical history of Chinese and Chinese American performance at a time when 'Asian American' identity was unheard of. It should be a welcome addition to Asian American studies and American cultural history, as well as theater and music history."

author of Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage - Josephine Lee

"Krystyn Moon has produced a finely detailed and nuanced study of China and Chinese Americans on the nineteenth-century American musical stage. Yellowface is an important work for anyone interested in the history of American popular culture and race."

author of Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture - Robert G. Lee

"Krystyn Moon has produced a finely detailed and nuanced study of China and Chinese Americans on the nineteenth-century American musical stage. Yellowface is an important work for anyone interested in the history of American popular culture and race."

From the Publisher